Alternatives
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: Maid Marian's return sets off a string of unfortunate events, leading Regina down an unexpected path exploring the ultimate 'what if' of her past with Robin Hood; she realizes she has her own choice to make about the fate of her happy ending.
1. Poison

"_Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."—Buddhist proverb_

* * *

The man had a peculiar habit of always turning up at just the right moment, but he had absolutely no concept of modern technology. Even if he wanted to call her, his lack of a phone to do so most certainly played to her advantage.

Besides, Regina was quite skilled at finding places where she intended not to be found. Marriage had been a great way to practice, with an entire castle's worth of options for being anywhere her dear husband Leopold the King wasn't. Then for 28 years she had basically hidden in plain sight as mayor of Storybrooke (the apple tree had been a brilliant stroke of irony, her own private joke), amongst fools who didn't even know they had something to search for—at least until the first curse had been broken.

Obviously the forest was out of the question; he could track her there as lazily as a fox did a chicken in a henhouse. And there were only so many places in her own home offering solace from the doorbell that would chime at various times in the night, and sometimes again as the dawn began to show through cracks in the sky, when she could visualize with a clarity that pierced her heart his resigned return home to his wife, to their shared bed, before his Marian could wake and realize she had slept in it alone.

Of course, even if there was no longer a man that belonged in Regina's life, there was still a boy, and he had no trouble locating her at all.

"Mom?"

"Henry," she sighed, and his presence at her side was like a balm that soothed and eased her eyes closed, for one rare, wonderful moment of calm.

"Mom, I…I didn't come alone." Henry looked down at his feet, sheepishly kicking up dirt.

Goodbye, calm.

"What," said Regina as evenly as she could muster for her son's sake, trying to swallow the slow, bitter burn of anger rising up like bile. She could never be ready for this; to fully feel loss of his touch only when he was close enough to deny it; to know that he had chosen someone else, and that his choice would be written plainly in the apology on his face and in the way he would no longer reach out to steal her kiss. And if that man had imposed upon Henry to facilitate this confrontation, she swore to God—

"Mom, please." Henry spoke earnestly, as he always did, endlessly trusting, and so strong to open his heart the way he alone knew how, where it only made her weak the times she'd tried to do the same. "She said she had to see you."

She?

"Regina, please don't blame Henry. I absolutely insisted that I come along, and I'm afraid I didn't give him much of a choice." The source of Regina's misdirected angst had maintained a cautionary perimeter around her field of vision but stepped directly into it as she spoke just now. "I only wanted to—"

"You _used_ my son," Regina said, rounding on Tinker Bell.

The fairy stood her ground. "You can't shut everyone out forever."

"Watch me," Regina snarled, fury sparking her magic like steel to flint, and shards of light crackled in her open palm. All three of them drew their gazes down in surprise.

Purple once more.

"Mom! Please, play nice." Henry must have inherited that look of exasperation from her, but this stubborn inclination of his to be a team player all the time most definitely came from his other mother.

Regina folded her hands into her lap with a long-suffering sigh and looked up at Tinker Bell expectantly, one eyebrow poised upward, haughty, deprecating, scornful.

"Great. I'll see you at Granny's later, Mom?" Henry put a hand on Regina's shoulder and squeezed encouragingly. She hummed in a noncommittal manner and his answering frown was so comically stern that she snorted out a laugh.

"_Fine_, fine," and with a playful shove away, "You win. Have it your way."

Henry bounded off with a megawatt grin and an exuberant spring in his step. Regina, realizing too late she had a smile to match, hurriedly rearranged her features to more appropriately express her general annoyance at having let herself get backed into a corner.

"I was on my way to see Blue when I ran into Henry. Walk with me there," Tinker Bell urged. She looked about them, taking in the almost hauntingly quiet atmosphere of their surroundings. A chilly, sinister vibe still emanated from the obscured markings in the dirt floor. "Honestly, I was surprised to find you here."

"That was the idea." Regina rose to stand in reluctant defeat, dusting off shreds of hay and what looked to be some rusted bronze metal debris from her wool skirt. She cast one last glance around the abandoned space before following Tinker Bell past what remained of the door—jagged and broken at the edges, where the Wicked Witch of the West's time portal had blasted it open and sent Regina's life into a downward-spiraling emotional cyclone of hell.

* * *

With every word that Tinker Bell left unspoken accentuated by the silence between their soft footfalls on the dirt-packed ground, Regina's vexation grew to volcanic proportions and then exploded forth. "This is your fault, you know," Regina accused her. "I know I barely dated the man for three days, but I spent decades before that with this insane idea in my head that you put there about how he was my soulmate, my second chance at happiness. And look how well that turned out, _again_."

"He _is_ your second chance at happiness," Tinker Bell corrected, nimbly sidestepping an overturned rock with her graceful fairy feet. "And quite frankly, you're the one who blew it the first time. But now this is your second chance with _him_."

"Are you blind?" Regina demanded to know. "This is your idea of me getting a second chance." An incredulous shake of her head. "The whole town witnessed his precious family reunion with that woman Emma had the nerve to bring back from the dead."

"And what have you been able to see since then," Tinker Bell retorted, "while hiding in your mansion, behind your mayor's desk, behind Henry?"

"Do _not_ bring Henry into this."

"Then don't pretend to know what's going on around you!" Tinker Bell's sudden, uncharacteristic outburst made them both pause for a moment by the side of the road. "I'm sorry," she said after a beat. "But we're not in the Enchanted Forest anymore. You can't sit on your throne high up in your castle, so far removed from the rest of the world and blaming everyone but yourself for your problems."

"I own my mistakes," Regina said, an echo of words he had spoken to her once, but the declaration lacked conviction coming from her. Did she, really? What fault of her own had she allowed herself to acknowledge, other than apparently not killing Marian properly the first time around?

_No_, she told herself vehemently. _No. You don't have to be the villain anymore. And killing people who get in your way is not an acceptable thing for heroes to do. _No matter how much her fingers may have been itching to do so.

"And do you have any idea what this is doing to Henry? It's tearing him apart, to have this rift between his families."

"He _is_ my family," Regina said, but she knew deep down Tinker Bell's words came from a place of legitimate concern. It wasn't fair to Henry, for her to keep pulling him down with her.

"You're not the only one who's suffering," said Tinker Bell, with a whopping load of subtext that made Regina's chest feel too small to contain the violent thudding of her heart. "There are no easy decisions to make for anyone under these circumstances."

They had ascended the steps of the convent. Tinker Bell sighed. "Look, Regina, why don't you stay for dinner?" Sensing Regina's hesitation and pouncing on it before it could become a definitive no, she gifted her with one smile, simple but effective in how rarely it occurred. "Come on. You'd be hard pressed to find better company than that of a nun and a misfit fairy."

Regina rolled her eyes but rapped her knuckles against the door. A scuffling sound and a high-pitched giggle issued from within, followed by the pitter pattering of many small steps and Blue's voice saying, firmly, "Sweetheart, just one moment—"

Before Regina had a chance to see if Tinker Bell looked as confused as she felt, the door swung open and she was greeted by the Blue Fairy, and from behind her skirts, an unmistakable mop of hair with matching brown eyes was peering up at her.

"R'gina!" Roland burbled through a mouthful of crackers, and promptly flung himself straight toward her torpedo-style.

"Oh," was all Regina could say, instinctively crouching down to absorb his excess energy, and all her reasons for wanting, for needing, to stay away suddenly made no sense at all—not when confronted with this tiny vehicle for love in its purest form, now encircling her neck and tugging delightedly at the ends of her hair. Bless his heart; the past week's events that had wrenched her presence from his life with such cold surgical precision hadn't seemed to temper his memory of it, or his fondness of her.

Maybe it really was as simple a thing as winning his heart with ice cream.

"I've been babysitting him for…" Blue trailed off, awkward and apologetic.

Regina realized her head had been swiveling here to there, everywhere, searching, for _him_, but her pulse dropped back down to a more normal rate upon registering Blue's words.

"Can I pour you some tea?" Mother Superior rushed on, leading them into the kitchen with exaggerated purpose, as if she intended to leave that uncomfortable start to the conversation back on the terrace like an ugly patio chair.

"I want to help!" said Roland, and Regina, who had been about to politely decline, simply couldn't resist letting him.

"All right, Roland," said Blue, hoisting him up into a cozy little perch on the counter. "We have so many kinds of tea to choose from! Put any you like in these teacups while Tink pours the water. Careful! They're hot." She was opening cabinets for him as Regina turned away and let her mask fall for a split second.

She felt ashamed as a familiar anger washed over her, and it was such a disservice to dear sweet Roland because of all people, he was utterly blameless, could not possibly disappoint her even when he had approached a woman he had no memory of and knew to call her "Mama," had done nothing to deserve the emotional upheaval in his life that even a four-year-old boy could perceive if not fully comprehend. But oh how she missed him, and she missed the one glorious afternoon they had spent together, with her mansion as their playground, and now she could smell in his hair not just the phantom kisses of his father, but another, foreign, feminine touch as well, and it made her stomach turn in somersaults.

"Here." Tinker Bell was handing her a daintily gilded cup, painted apple blossoms extending leafy tendrils around the handle that Regina accepted into her grasp. "Just remember what I said, Regina. This has been a hard adjustment for others too. You need to know that."

At a loss for words, Regina sank onto the nearest cushy surface and took a sip. A dash of cinnamon, heavy on the honey and, of course, infused with apples. Go figure. But it felt comforting sliding down and scalding her throat, and three swallows later it was gone.

Roland left Blue to bustling about the kitchen and toddled over in Regina's direction, to begin drumming a random, excited beat onto her knee; she playfully captured his hand in hers and they touched palms; she tickled his fingers and giggles bubbled out of him like a glass of champagne.

"How is he," she wanted to know suddenly, hoarsely, leaving no room for ambiguity about who she referred to. When Tinker Bell didn't answer right away, Regina shifted impatiently. Tink was clinking a spoon around in her own teacup, staring intently into it like it held some sort of secret; she wasn't even looking at Regina. It was like she hadn't spoken at all.

She noticed then that Roland had undertaken the business of tracing blobs into her palm, but she could barely feel a thing. In fact, all her senses seemed rather dulled, and where it might have been apt to respond with some alarm at her condition she felt only an indifferent curiosity, as though she were seeing something strange happen to someone else from afar.

Her skin began to tingle all over, like an army of ants was marching across it. She closed her eyes.

"Regina? Are you feeling all right?" Tinker Bell's voice hovered close by, and then hands were examining her forehead, checking her pulse, wiping sweat beading off of her skin.

_Obviously not_, Regina had every intention of saying, but at that moment the cup slipped from her noodly fingers and shattered impressively all over the hardwood floor. She tried to put out a warning hand in case Roland decided to investigate, but her arm felt strangely like lead and rubber all at once.

The cup.

"What did—what did you put in my tea?" Regina managed to gasp out as she felt her body crumpling like a sock and slipping down the edge of the sofa. "Are you trying…to…poison me?"

Tinker Bell knit her eyebrows into a withering glare at Regina's ludicrous accusation before turning to Blue, who was shaking her head in complete bewilderment as she coaxed Roland away from the shards of broken glass.

"Not me," Blue said, looking down at the boy with dawning comprehension. "Roland…Roland, which tea canister did you use?"

"That one," Roland said happily, a chubby little finger directing everyone's attention to an emerald green tin that had been generously festooned with sparkles, nestled innocently behind a large ceramic cookie jar.

"Oh, no…"

Regina vaguely registered the consternation in Blue's voice as she began to see dark spots invading her periphery and coalescing toward the center.

"I made Regina's tea!" Roland beamed, with dimples on full display, looking pleased as punch.

Tinker Bell hurriedly grabbed the tin and snapped the lid open. "It's empty," she said, holding it out for Blue to examine.

"Empty?" Blue gasped. "That's…that's extremely concerning."

"Why? What was in it?"

Blue's uneasy gaze lifted up slowly to meet Tinker Bell's anxious one. "Pixie dust."

Tinker Bell's eyes were round as saucers. "What happens when you…ingest pixie dust?"

With trepidation Blue surveyed the Queen, now slumped on the floor against the couch. Roland had inched his way back over to her side and was touching a concerned hand to her cheek, but Regina was out cold. Blue looked back at Tinker Bell, apprehensiveness clearly evident in the crinkling of her brow.

"I couldn't say. It's never been done before."

* * *

Her head was killing her, slowly and with what felt like many small knives. God, whatever was in that tea had really done a number on her. The fresh scent of earth reached her nose, which seemed odd, even after considering whatever the hell had just happened to her, for which 'odd' didn't even begin to cover it.

It occurred to her then that she was no longer propped up, but lying down. She extended an arm outward to inspect the situation and encountered a thin sheet of blanket, and beyond that, nothing but…dirt and blades of grass.

Maybe now was as good a time as any to panic, because the only plausible explanation for her current predicament was that she had very nearly been beaten at her own game, and only by some stroke of dumb luck had the two fairies managed to neither kill her nor dispose of her body properly.

She felt ridiculous even thinking it.

There was a dull flap of a heavy-sounding fabric and her eyelids were immediately assaulted with piercing rays of sunshine. Groaning, she lifted a hand to disrupt the stream of light, massaging her temples with a thumb and forefinger. At least her limbs seemed willing to play ball with her brain again. That part was promising.

"Ah, I see you've finally decided to rejoin the land of the living."

Regina's entire body went rigid as though it had been submerged in arctic waters. Her eyes flew open, blinded briefly by the beams of light dancing circles around the silhouette of a man who towered above her near the opening of the tent; then, slowly, they realigned to illuminate a smirking, rakishly handsome face she had hoped against hope to never see again for as long as her heart still beat in her chest.

"_Robin_?"

* * *

**A/N:** Many fun things planned for Regina coming soon, if you guys are interested… :)


	2. About Time

"_Robin_?" Her heart plummeted into the pit of her stomach like an anchor thrown overboard the Jolly Roger.

"Welcome back." He was smiling. Why was he smiling?

A thousand more questions were running marathons in her still-throbbing head. Welcome back to where, exactly? What the hell had those fairies put in her tea? Considering they'd gone to such absurd lengths to finally get her face to face with this man, she was starting to think she'd really rather not know. If she weren't so busy feeling outraged, maybe she could give Tinker Bell her proper due for no doubt masterminding such a diabolical plan, forcing Roland's hand and—if she'd gotten Blue knowingly involved in this too, then Regina was doubly impressed, if not begrudgingly so.

But honestly, had it been all that necessary for them to dump her in the forest with him in such an unceremonious manner?

The forest! Shit. Was Marian somewhere nearby? The thought curdled her blood like spoiled milk. The expletives flooding her mind probably would've raised the Charmings' eyebrows straight through the roof. She still wasn't feeling quite back to her normal self; surely nobody could fault her if she happened to accidentally set the woman on fire, or at the very least give her a good kick to the stupid face.

Nope, she was definitely not in her right mind at the moment. But she sure was pissed as hell at this man, who had not only gotten her heart stolen after she gave it to him for safekeeping, but had gone and retrieved it only to break it into pieces later; and she had every intention of giving him hell back for it. If it got loud enough for Marian, his stupid Merry Men and the rest of Storybrooke to hear, then so much the better—this was what everyone wanted, wasn't it? A confrontation?

She glared belligerently at him and prepared to deliver a prelude to her vicious verbal diatribe. "Here's the thing, Robin. You can't just—" but she couldn't help but pause when she saw the look on his face.

He was regarding her with poorly disguised amusement. "I see we are on a first name basis now."

Hmm. Pardon?

You'll have to excuse the Queen while she retrieves her jaw from the floor where it dropped just now.

She propped herself up on her elbows and examined him closer. There was something decidedly off about him, about this whole situation, that she needed to reevaluate before she went on an emotional rampage that could very well end up making her look like a huge idiot. What was different about him that was so hard for her to put her finger on?

Robin moved around to her right side, and she noticed something in his hand resembling a lump of clay that had been crudely fashioned into a mug; the other held a brown cloth bag and a bowl, filled with various sprigs of freshly picked herbs. He sat down cross-legged on a fluffy patch of grass near her head and she inched instinctively away. He smelled exactly the same here, wherever here was, as he did that night outside Granny's when she had last seen him (touched him, kissed him), and it was nothing short of hopelessly disorienting.

He was rummaging through the bag and sprinkling things at will into the bowl dwarfed in his hand. "You'll have to forgive my surprise. Just last night I believe the term you had so affectionately chosen to address me as was something along the lines of…thief? Or was it vagrant?"

Oh…God.

A hand flew instantly to her hair, to where it should have ended just past her shoulders.

It went all the way down her back.

She realized then why his appearance had struck her as so inexplicably odd. At first glance he hadn't been wearing anything unusual—because she'd grown used to seeing him that way, nearly every day, for the past year. In comparison, his Storybrooke clothes barely registered in her memory at all. But where there should've been a green sweater thrown over a button up shirt, he wore a loose, ivory-colored tunic instead. Gone was the green scarf; a brown cloak was slung around his neck in its place.

This was no ordinary forest. She had been brought back to an enchanted one.

Well if that was the case, then how had he gotten here too? Unless…she now existed in a completely different timeframe altogether. Yes, that had to be it; she had been sent back in time to the missing year somehow, and Snow had yet to cast the curse that returned them all to Storybrooke.

But that still didn't explain what she was she doing here with Robin Hood, and why he seemed so keen on nursing her back to health. They could hardly tolerate each other's company for half a witch meeting with the Charmings, and that was on a good day. If anything, she expected him to give her some heavy sedative, rather than do the opposite by trying to keep her awake—and for what, exactly, so they could continue to harass one another?—but she knew deep down that was about as likely as Tinker Bell sneaking poison into her tea.

This just made no sense at all. It hurt her brain to think about it.

"And besides," Robin continued as though oblivious to her growing perplexity, "if you're to start calling me by my real name, I believe it's only fair that you finally tell me yours."

Regina's insides froze over.

Just when she was beginning to think the situation couldn't get much worse. This version of Robin Hood had absolutely no idea who she was.

"Only when you're ready, of course." He finished grinding up the herbs with a stub of branch and poured in the steaming contents of the mug. "Here, take this. I promise it will help with what troubles you."

Regina's face must have stated plainly that she highly doubted it, because he bit his lip to hide a smile and said, "I assure you it's not poisoned."

When she only stared at him, Robin set the bowl down in front of her anyway. It was now emitting a thick vapor accompanied by some sort of foul smell, which instantly did at least half the trick in sobering her up.

Seriously, though, she was getting tired of people offering her suspicious things that they expected her to drink.

"Where—" Her mouth clamped shut as she wondered belatedly whether it would be wise to reveal how little she knew of these strange new circumstances. Anyway, as she was starting to realize, the more appropriate question was not where, but when. Which would probably make her sound insane.

"I must say I'm quite impressed. Your current state may not speak much to it, but you certainly handled your liquor well last night." He eyed her with brazen curiosity as she wrapped her hands reluctantly around the bowl and took a tentative sip. "Particularly for a runaway maid under former employment of the King."

Regina almost choked on her medieval hangover remedy, which tasted exactly how it looked, like an ill-advised concoction of dirt, leaves and more dirt. Robin's eyes sparkled.

"Gently, now." He came to squat down on the blanket next to her, reached out and began rubbing slow, comforting circles into her back. Tears were springing to her eyes that may not all have been entirely related to her coughing fit. The last week she had spent aching for his warmth had felt like an eternity; but to the man resting his hand against her bare skin now, his touch probably meant next to nothing, so it felt nothing but cruel to her.

She struggled to regulate her breathing and tried to think of Henry.

Henry—was she ever going to see him again? Because he was quite literally nonexistent right now. In fact, his mother hadn't even been born yet (at least there were some things about this time period that had their redeeming qualities). And Snow White had still been just a girl when Tinker Bell's pixie dust had first brought Regina to the tavern, and she had run from the man with the lion tattoo.

Only this time, it appeared she had met him that night after all.

Despite what she could piece together, the result was still rather puzzling. For instance—was maid to the _King_ really the best that her past (alternative?) self could come up with? Well, she supposed the art of disguises and running away had never been a part of her mother's lesson plans. But perhaps this wouldn't turn out to be such a bad thing. She could make it work; hit reset, start over. Maybe this—maybe _this_ was her second chance.

She started at the feel of Robin's thumb stroking her cheek, and realized he was wiping the rest of her tears away. He had mistaken them to mean something else.

"Now, there's no need for those. As I've said before, your secret is safe with me, milady." He winked. His eyes were even bluer than she remembered, vast oceans, and she was falling into them slowly. His thumb lingered even after her tears had dried. For an exhilarating second she swore she saw his gaze flicker down to her lips, but then the moment was gone and she couldn't be sure if she'd imagined it or not.

He slowly began to withdraw his hand when a familiar image caught her eye, and without even thinking she had grabbed hold of his forearm. Her throat constricted as she traced the outline of his tattoo, caressed the lion, felt his wrist twitch involuntarily beneath her fingertips. He was sitting so close to her now, her neck tingled pleasantly with every warm breath he took. His other hand had come to rest right near where her hip met the ground, and it was driving her crazy in the best possible way.

She felt his breathing quicken more than she heard it, and slowly tilted her head towards him so she could read his face through her eyelashes. He was staring down at her hand on his tattoo, with his lips slightly parted, looking utterly mesmerized.

He moved suddenly just as she was about to turn away and her nose rubbed against the stubble lining his upper lip, sending a jolt down her body that he must have felt too because his eyes turned dark, hooded. They positively burned through her as their shallows breaths intermingled.

There was no dodging around it now. She missed him. She missed him even more in this moment, with his face so achingly close to hers, than she had when she thought him gone from her life for good. She missed him so much it felt like she had been slowly suffocating to death and only now able to come up for air. She was still so angry with him, but she knew he had done the honorable thing, had done right by his family by staying with Marian, and how could she fault him for that? And yet, here he was now, and there was no Marian; no emotional baggage to claim on his part; and if she could just check her own outside this tent, then there was nothing that could keep them from each other anymore.

Her eyelids fluttered closed. She felt his nose graze her cheek and then his lips, ever so cautiously, ghosted against hers, in a motion that stopped her heart.

Someone chose that opportune moment to come blundering into the tent.

"Robin—milady!" By the time she opened her eyes Robin was already a good three feet away from her, looking uncharacteristically out of sorts. A large, heavy-set man with a wild mane of curly hair was halted at the tent opening in shock, his eyes shifting back and forth between the two of them. Finding the proper thing to say next played out on his face like a physical struggle. "You're awake," he said at last. "How—how are you feeling, after last night?"

"I'm fine, thank you, Little John," she said, and if he had looked surprised before, now he was positively baffled. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Robin duck his head down and hide a smile into his hand.

Little John cleared his throat awkwardly. "I just came to give you this." He tossed a thin brown package wrapped in twine at Robin, who caught it out of the air one-handed with practiced ease. It disappeared into his tunic without a second glance.

"I'll just be on my way then," said Little John unnecessarily, and he shuffled back out, closing the flap behind him.

Silence followed. Robin looked determined to maintain a safe distance away from her, but the air between them was still palpably charged; an unspoken promise lingered there, filling it with tantalizing thoughts of what could have been, had they not been interrupted.

"Let's go for a walk, shall we," Robin said suddenly, as though coming to an important decision.

Regina wondered offhandedly what it was with people today and their hot beverages and taking long walks. She threw aside the blanket that had been covering her and stood to stretch; only then did she realize she was wearing some strange garment, about as shapeless as a burlap sack, that she had never seen before in her life.

"_What_ is this?"

"Ah." Robin cringed. "Yes, about that."

"Did you undress me while I was unconscious?" Her face burned with mortification, and then it occurred to her how her words must have sounded.

"You think me that dishonorable?" He stepped toward her suddenly with very little regard for her personal space. "I can assure you, you were very much aware of yourself when I undressed you last night." She inhaled sharply. The gap between them was positively crackling with tension. And then he must have realized how _his _words sounded, for he swallowed audibly and made a point of backing off, looking away.

"Your undergarments are still fully intact and were left untouched," he promised, voice raspy. "Though I couldn't say the same for your dress." His gaze drew hers to the corner of the tent, where a hopeless-looking pile of fabric had been shoved aside; it was smeared with dirt, grass stains and also quite possibly—was that dried blood?

She looked questioningly up at him.

"You made quite an impression last night," he shrugged simply, by way of explanation.

* * *

They passed through a decently sized community of tents, with men whom Regina presumed to be of the Merry variety milling about. Some of them nodded to Robin and others gave her brief, friendly smiles (as well as an occasional "feeling better today, mum?"), but otherwise they were largely left alone. It was a brisk evening; Robin had brought along an extra cloak, and he wrapped it around her shoulders now when he caught her shivering. He pointed out at a path ahead that wound its way along the edge of the forest and into a nearby town, the name of which she couldn't quite make out on the barely legible sign jammed precariously into the ground.

They walked side by side in silence for some time. Finally, she broke it with a question that had been plaguing her for the better part of the afternoon.

"So I wasn't exactly pulling punches last night, was I?"

He chuckled. "Trust me, I've been called far worse."

She tried to imagine how pre-Evil Queen Regina would have responded to finding out her supposed soulmate had abandoned a lordship in favor of living in the woods, and made a living by stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Apparently not well—but also not poorly enough to have stopped her from leaving. She also had difficulty picturing herself throwing down her ale with the best of them. She had barely had a sip of wine at her own wedding, and had only done so at the relentless behest of her mother (granted, there had been little cause for her to celebrate at such an event anyway). But alcohol in general had never been her poison of choice.

Her musings occupied her all the way to the edge of the town. The streets were mostly deserted, save for a man up ahead of them, with a cruel face and an unfortunate-looking goatee, who was arguing with someone through an open doorway. Greasy chunks of hair flopped down across his temples and he pushed them aside, revealing two beady little eyes. The skin around one of them was badly bruised. He didn't appear to like whatever the other person had to say and stalked off, muttering foully as he disappeared inside another shop with the tinkle of a bell tied above the door. Something about him made her uneasy.

"Who was that man?"

Robin gave her an odd look. "The Sheriff? You had the pleasure of making his brief acquaintance last night." Then he broke out into a roguish grin. "Of course, you are fortunate enough to have no memory of this." But she noticed the smile dimpling his cheeks didn't quite make it to his eyes.

The Sheriff. The Sheriff? Hold on. The sign they had passed on the side of the road swam back into view. Did he mean the Sheriff of fucking Nottingham?

She heard the bell tinkle again and the Sheriff's voice floated just around the corner, ranting loudly about something to his companion as their footfalls crunched against gravel. In the early stages of panic, Regina surveyed their surroundings for an adequate hiding spot. All the nearest storefronts were closed. Damn it.

The Sheriff's slimy voice was drawing nearer, and still Robin was walking casually in the middle of the road, with a devil-may-care attitude that made her want to kick him. What on earth was he thinking? He was going to get caught! For what she didn't know specifically, but she was convinced Robin Hood had probably done any number of things in the past week alone to make himself a wanted man. Well, if the idiot was going to voluntarily walk headfirst into trouble, she was going to have to do something about it. So she did the only thing that made sense to her—how many times had she seen this done successfully in the movies?—she whirled around, bunched his hood up in her hands, and, taking advantage of his complete and utter shock, slammed him back against the corner of a wall with all her might. And then she kissed him.

She felt him tense under her touch. He brought his hands to her shoulders and for one awful second she thought his intention was to push her away. His lips were not exactly unresponsive, but they lacked the warmth, the fire that she had so cherished in his Storybrooke kisses. She pulled back slightly, uncertain. His eyes were closed and his forehead wrinkled, like he was lost in some internal battle. His grip on her shoulders had tightened to the point that it was almost painful. But his pulse was racing against her palm where it rested alongside his neck, and his jaw clenched as though he were exercising a significant amount of restraint.

He let out a single shuddering breath and hauled her body into his arms. She gave a small "oh!" of surprise and then his mouth was on hers, muffling the sound. His hesitation had been replaced by an acute sense of urgency, a hand coming up to grasp her hair and angle her head backwards. His tongue parted her lips and a moan escaped as it came in contact with her own. Her insides burned like lava. She heard a loud objection of disgust nearby—the Sheriff, no doubt—but at that moment she couldn't care less if he arrested them both for displays of public indecency. Robin's arm had snaked around beneath her cloak to settle in the small of her back, lifting her up on her toes and pressing her chest flush against his. She was starting to feel lightheaded—whether from the growing lack of oxygen or the heady sensation of his tongue doing unspeakable things to her mouth, she did not know—but it made her heart sing.

It was over all too soon when he pulled away, gripping her hips hard for a second longer before his arms dropped to his sides. Luckily, the Sheriff and his friend had disappeared from sight. Regina's chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. And Robin—he simply stared at her, his own breathing uneven, his eyes filled with a quiet despair.

"I'm sorry," she gasped, staggering back. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for, but he looked so distraught, and it was the only thing she could manage to say. "I just thought—"

"Were you trying to make him jealous?" Robin's mouth quirked up, evidently trying to make light of the situation. "There's no need for that. I heard he was recently betrothed. A favorable match for the maiden, no doubt." He paused. "Although I suppose that doesn't mean much, considering his untoward advances last night." His mouth set in a thin, hard line, but he said nothing more on the matter and Regina thought it best to steer clear from any further mentioning of events she didn't remember anyway.

"Of course I wasn't," she bristled. "I just—well—you are a thief, aren't you?"

Damn it. So much for that part about not looking like an idiot.

"Can't let go of that, can you?" But he didn't look offended in the slightest. "Considering your fixation with giving me grief for my chosen profession, I'm surprised you're still here." But he wasn't, not really, and she could see it in his face. He was drawn to her, as much as she was to him; the only difference was, he had not a clue why. And she could sense there was yet something else holding him back.

"The Sheriff," Robin began, pushing himself off the wall, "has always had the distinct misfortune of being either ten steps behind, or in the wrong place and wrong time entirely."

"So basically what you're saying is, he just hasn't caught you in the act yet." She fell back into step beside him.

He gave her a lopsided grin. "More or less."

"He never did strike me as particularly bright," she muttered under her breath.

"What was that?"

She just shook her head and smiled. They slipped into an easy silence as they walked on. Twilight had fallen; a man with a torch was working his way around the square, lighting lamps as he went, casting a dreamy glow over everything. Every few steps or so Regina felt her eyes drifting over to Robin, just to reassure herself that he was still there, but she stopped herself each time before he could catch her looking.

If she hadn't been so wrapped up in keeping a careful arm's length between them, she might have noticed the cobblestoned path was one she had taken before. But as it was, it took a wall, literally, to stop her in her tracks and realize where she was. Taking her hand, Robin led her under a stone archway, past a collection of barrels. A green troll painted on a sign above the door grinned fiendishly down at them. Through the frosted glass panel she could see a busty woman walk by with a large pitcher of ale, and beyond her a boisterous group of men clinking their flagons together.

It was the tavern, bathed in a radiant green haze of light.

"Where we first met," Robin smiled. He held the door open for her, and his head dipped into a small bow. "After you…your majesty."

* * *

**A/N:** This chapter was so much more fun to write than the previous one (probably because Robin was actually in it this time), but then it kind of turned into a monster…I hope you enjoyed reading it anyway? Stay tuned! And always, any kind of feedback is much appreciated (e.g., "yay!" and "this is garbage!" are equally helpful things to know). Your comments have brought the biggest, dopiest smile to my face, and thank you as well to everyone else following along! I love you guys!


	3. Identity

Regina was in such a shock she didn't even register how she got from the doorway to the long wooden table where she stood now, save for Robin's hand on her back guiding her to sit down on the bench. He was settling in across from her when one of the barmaids sashayed over to them, looking positively predatory.

Despite her state, Regina still had the wherewithal to narrow her eyes ever so slightly as the woman leaned in to Robin, milky white breasts spilling out of her tightly cinched corset. She tossed her cheap red curls over one shoulder, achieving another subtle jiggle of her chest and bathing them in a sickly sweet perfume. Regina had to refrain from gagging.

To his credit, even as the insufferable woman continued to shamelessly press her body closer and closer, Robin's eyes remained locked on Regina's. They looked deeply amused, whereas hers were probably mutinous.

"You'll be having the usual, I take it?" the woman said throatily, all sex and sultriness.

"Yes, thank you, Jacqueline," Robin said casually, and Regina scowled at the familiarity in his voice. "But perhaps nothing tonight for the lady," he added, even though the barmaid hadn't bothered to ask, and in fact seemed perfectly content to act as though a potted plant had been sitting there in Regina's place.

"Actually," Regina said, perfectly pleasantly, though her eyes told a different story, "I'll have a double of whatever he's having." His eyebrow shot up at that, and she raised her own in a silent challenge.

"Right, then," said Jacqueline, nonplussed, and throwing one last come-hither look at Robin (who was still casually abstaining from eye contact), she sauntered off, full hips swinging.

Regina immediately dropped the smiley pretense and wrinkled her forehead at him in consternation. He had his hands folded together on the table and was looking innocently about the crowded tavern as though curious to see what features it had to offer, despite the obvious fact that he was a regular. She sighed and took the plunge.

"So. You know who I am."

Robin looked down at his hands for a second and then back up at her, his expression unreadable. "I do indeed." He didn't seem particularly inclined to offer any further details, so she pressed on.

"How did you figure it out?"

"I didn't, at least not at first," Robin admitted. "But you have this manner about you that carries a distinct air of…haughtiness." She gave him a glare that would've frightened off lesser men, but he only grinned. "Entitlement?" he tried again, and laughed out right when she took a swat at him and failed, his reflexes too quick for her hand.

"You also get this suspicious, surprised look in your eye whenever I mention your maiden trade—see, there it is again—" This time she actually succeeded in slapping him soundly across the arm, and his teeth caught his bottom lip in a wicked smile.

They were rudely interrupted by the unwelcome return of the barmaid, who made sure to give Robin ample view of her bosom along with his pint of ale. She seemed to have forgotten to bring Regina's. Naturally.

And then, much to Regina's disdain, the woman loitered.

"I heard you taught the Sheriff a lesson or two last night. Robin, how could you?" she said, though she sounded far more impressed than alarmed.

Robin had the decency to look somewhat contrite.

"A good blow to the face, is what Little John told me! Not that his looks aren't much improved upon, but you know he'll have your head the next chance he gets."

"Perhaps we won't give him one, then." Robin looked up at her with a devilish wink (didn't have to look far, given that her face was mere inches from his). This seemed to placate her simple little peabrain of a mind momentarily.

Regina recalled the bruising on the Sheriff of Nottingham's face and turned to stare at Robin in wide-eyed disbelief. "That was _you_?"

"Cheeky," said Jacqueline, frowning disapprovingly at her. "Weren't you there? Oh, that's right. Heard _someone _got a bit sloppy last night." God, her high-pitched sing-songy shrill of a voice was really starting to feel like a cheese grater on Regina's nerves.

She wasn't even conscious of the fact that her hand had twitched and risen from the table—maybe to slap this woman across her excessively rouged cheek, that would've been a nice change of pace—until she felt Robin's palm press it back down, his thumb drawing soothing circles along the inside of her wrist.

The barmaid was eyeing their hands with a peevish look on her face.

"Excuse me," said Regina, saccharine sweet. "I believe you seem to have forgotten something." She looked pointedly at Robin's drink. When the woman only blinked at her, Regina let out a deep, theatrical sigh. "Well, I guess we'll just have to share then," she said regretfully to Robin, as if there were no way around it, and she leaned slowly over their entwined hands to grab hold of his cup. Batting her eyelashes at him, she lifted the rim to her lips.

Jacqueline had the nerve to look affronted, and left in a huff.

As soon as she was out of earshot Regina coughed and sputtered out the amber gold liquid. It tasted vile, even worse than Robin's herb mixture, if that were possible. How had she managed to stomach it last night?

"I see you're one for making fast friends," Robin commented wryly, and Regina smiled faintly at him. He had no idea.

"No more than you are, apparently."

"The Sheriff got what was coming to him," Robin said shortly. At the skeptical look on her face, he only shook his head. "You're really better off not remembering, trust me." He shrugged off his cloak and rolled the sleeves of his tunic up to his elbows, like that was all there was to say about it. Let him think so for now; he would learn soon enough that the Queen could be quite persistent when she wanted to be.

Speaking of which.

"There was this one other small matter," Robin said, returning to the original topic of their conversation. He retrieved a yellowed parchment, folded twice over, from within his tunic. "I came across this not two days after you joined my Merry Men. There were several more just like it scattered throughout the forest. Posters, promising a generous sum in exchange for the Queen's immediate and safe return to her King. Although…" The paper crinkled as he proceeded to open it. "I'm not entirely convinced based upon this drawing." He looked up at her, eyes roaming over her face with a naked intensity that brought a pink flush to her cheeks. "It does little justice to the real thing."

Regina took the parchment from his outstretched hand and released the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. The woman sketched out on it bore maybe a passing resemblance to someone who could be her second cousin, if she were being generous about it. The nose was all wrong, and there was no way that her eyes—not even the right color, she noted with some irritation—were that far apart. It also helped that the portrait wore a slim crown of tiny sapphires set in gold, which she would be happy to never see again in her life; and even if she had been wearing it now, she would sooner be accused of being a thief than a queen. Which, from this vantage point, would be a welcome change.

"Does your husband even know what you look like?" Robin queried teasingly.

Her face visibly fell, and his gaze softened immediately.

"Forgive me, milady," he said, his voice low. "I should have known my place."

"No, no. It's fine." She gave him a smile to reassure him. Honestly, it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember—or all too tempting to forget—how things had been in the days before Rumplestiltskin, and magic, and her quest for vengeance, had consumed them. And being around Robin Hood always helped her forget, well, everything. "Like most other things in my life, my marriage was…arranged by someone else." She didn't know what else there was to say.

The corner of his mouth curved up in a small, rueful expression of understanding.

"Well, my reluctant Queen, I'll tell you what did finally persuade me of the truth," and he grasped a smooth hand between his rough and calloused ones, "I'm afraid you do not have the skin to suggest it belongs to a well-behaved scullery maid. Or a handmaiden. Or any other type of maid, for that matter."

"Maybe I'm not that well-behaved," Regina couldn't stop herself from saying in time.

"Oh, I don't doubt it." His eyes smoldered and his voice was rough.

And from the way he was looking at her now, it made no difference that she was wearing a potato sack for a dress and probably had leaves and other bits of forest nonsense in her hair; she felt like the most beautiful woman on earth.

"I would also recommend—for the next time you choose to run away—that you try not to divulge the true location from whence you actually escaped. And reconsider your attire, if you're not in too much of a hurry. Just to make it a step less complicated for you when trying to persuade others of your false identity."

"Okay! Okay." Regina snatched her hand away, though she couldn't help but return his smile. "I…see your point." And then she didn't know what to do with her hands, so she smoothed them against the coarsely spun fabric in her lap.

"I do apologize that we didn't have garments more befitting a royal," he said, watching her response carefully.

"I don't mind," she smiled. She really didn't. Not if he kept looking at her like that.

"My intent was to not have you walking about like a street urchin who'd drunkenly picked the wrong fight and lost it."

"That's not what actually happened, is it?" asked Regina with some horror. It sounded pretty preposterous, but who knew anymore? Her life had suddenly gotten quite turned around in a matter of mere hours; at this point, nothing could surprise her anymore.

(Challenge accepted.)

Robin chuckled into his ale but would neither confirm nor deny.

"Does…anyone else know?" Her voice lost its typical veneer, the hardness that always coated the words she shot at people like bullets, at everyone except him, and Henry.

Robin answered by folding her wanted poster back into a little square. He dipped it into a candle illuminating their table and they both watched as the paper blackened at the edges and burned through to the center, curling into the shape of a charred rose. The flame flickered over the lion inked into his arm and it seemed to come to life, making her entire body thrum. When it was just short of burning his hand, Robin blew it out and the sooty remains crumpled to the table in an ashen heap. She suspected all the other posters he'd found had met a similar fate.

"Not for as long as you wish it."

Regina bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from beaming at the somber gallantry in his tone. "Not even your Merry Men?"

"Not even Little John, your majesty."

"Regina," she said lowly. "I prefer Regina."

"Regina," said Robin, his whole face crinkling into a full, beautiful smile.

It seemed as though Jacqueline had finally given up on them, but Regina almost dared the woman to come bustling back, fully armed with her obnoxious breasts and her bratty attitude; even she couldn't bring her down from this ridiculous high, her heart soaring upward just shy of the stars studding the night sky.

"So," she said.

"So," said he, leaning forward, still seemingly unable to stop smiling, and she wondered if his face mirrored her own. "It appears as though I am more or less responsible for having stolen the Queen."

"It does look that way." Regina closed the gap even further between them. "So what do you plan to do with me?"

Oh my God. She was flirting with him like some lovestruck teenage girl, and she couldn't stop. Worse—she didn't want to stop.

"You're not the least bit concerned that I might turn you in, exchange you for a pile of gold?" But there was a distinct twinkle in his eye as he said it, and she knew the idea of him regarding her in a proprietary manner, as a commodity with some predetermined monetary value, was completely absurd.

"No, that would be too easy," Regina said dismissively, playing along. "And from the stories I've heard about you…well, where's the fun in that, if there's no element of danger involved?"

Robin tried to temper the delight in his features, rather unsuccessfully. "So you _have_ heard of me?" Oops—her past self hadn't exactly been brought up on a book of fairy tales; nor had she been Queen long enough to suffer the countless complaints from noblemen and pleas from commoners alike for the infamous bandit to either be off with his head or keep it. (But she'd been too consumed by her own personal vendetta against a very different bandit altogether to care for much else.)

If he noticed her pause at the slip up, he paid it no mind; on the contrary, she had to roll her eyes at him, he was grinning so goofily, and laughter erupted from him in a delicious rumble. "Notoriously smug _and_ lawless," she teased fondly, feeling pleasantly heated under the easy warmth of his gaze.

"I feel—" His voice was hoarse and he paused to clear his throat. "I feel like I've known you for…a long time. But how is that possible? We only just met…" He trailed off and took a long swallow of his drink, and that look was on his face again, the same as when she had kissed him outside the tavern and he had been plagued by some deep guilt, overwrought with a profound sense of longing.

How long _had_ this Robin Hood known her for?

Suddenly she recalled his remark about her wanted posters—it hadn't really registered at the time, when her concern had been targeted elsewhere, but now—how they had cropped up in the forest _not two days after you joined my Merry Men_—

She had assumed, reasonably so, that her present had stumbled upon an alternative version of her past; but that it was one unaltered, until last night, when some nameless force had brought her into the tavern to meet a happier fate. She'd even built up an elaborate fantasy in her head; it involved the unwelcome propositioning of a frightened queen in disguise by one slimy, unkempt Sheriff, driving a handsome stranger in a hood to defend a lady's honor by putting a fist in the man's face. And his cheeky rejoinder when she wouldn't be able to muster more than a dumbfounded stare—"A simple thank you would suffice," but then a smirk would follow—

Now, though, Regina wondered, who was to say she hadn't met him days, even weeks ago, and during that time been engaged in all manner of raucous rabblerousing in the company of Robin Hood and his Merry Men? It both exhilarated and terrified her, to think about the new memories of him she could potentially unearth, and store away in her mind for safekeeping.

Memories that, she had desperately avoided considering until now, were probably not even real.

Finishing off his ale, Robin lifted a hand and Regina barely had a chance to blink when a roughspun brown pouch, tied off with a small length of rope, materialized suddenly in his palm; he dropped it casually into the empty cup with a muffled jingling sound.

"That's quite a tip," Regina commented archly.

"The owner of this tavern," he gestured, "was run out of the town where he grew up, by a degenerate lord who desired his daughter. The nobleman fell short of burning their house to the ground when my friend refused to comply by his unsavory…requests."

"Oh my God," said Regina, startled. "Where was this?"

"Locksley," he said, and her heart grew cold to hear it.

"That lord," said Robin, standing up, "was my father." He smiled crookedly at her. "There will always be someone's debt to be paid, and I intend to never stop paying it. Do you still think me a dishonorable man?"

"I never did," she said truthfully; not even during the missing year when her scornful derision of him suggested otherwise, and her heart sank just a little deeper into her chest because she knew the implication behind her words was lost on him, and it was a burden heavy to bear alone. She felt his hand nestle into the small of her back again as they made their way out of the tavern.

"You're not the man he was, Robin." This was a strange role reversal, being the one to reassure and support him for a change. "You're—you _will_ be an amazing father." And he was startled by the unequivocal certainty in her voice, a confidence founded in truth, manifested in the flawless form of a beautiful young boy that he would never know.

How could she allow herself this kind of happiness, if it were only achieved in place of another; when _nothing was worth the loss of a child_—especially of two? She longed to hear Henry's voice, tickling her ear with his solemn words of wisdom that only the young and the innocent could impart. He would tell her that she had to investigate, give it some code word—Operation Red Fox this time, no doubt—and that maybe the key lay in the memories she had yet to unlock. To sort out why she was here, perhaps she first had to learn what she'd been doing since she arrived, and for how long—if there'd been anything out of the ordinary, something she was supposed to change, or prevent from changing, but everything had already changed, and was so unrecognizable yet so familiar at the same time, and when had her life turned out to be a goddamn _Back to the Future_ movie?

"You know," said Robin, interrupting her muddied stream of consciousness, and he treated her to a roguish grin that sent her pulse skyrocketing, "that dress really is rather fetching on you. Stunning, even."

"This old thing?" Regina plucked at a loose thread, then thought better of it in case the entire thing decided to unravel. "You're just saying that so I don't take your head off later," she said with a playful dance of her eyebrows, which he returned with a mocking raise of his own.

She couldn't bring herself to ruin the moment by dredging up more uncomfortable questions; she didn't want to see that unfathomable look of distress in his eye again. Maybe he wouldn't be the one to fill in the blanks, but she had an idea who would.

* * *

"Little John," she greeted, coming up behind the man as he sat on the bank with his legs in the water, pants rolled up to the knee. He was scrubbing furiously at something in his hands. "Let me help you with that."

"Milady!" he said, so startled he promptly dropped whatever he was holding into the water. Guided by the moonlight, Regina reached a hand into its icy depths and retrieved her dress, once ivory white and glorious, now filthy and, she was fairly certain, speckled with day's old blood. The Sheriff's blood.

"I was trying to salvage what I could," Little John said, rather bashfully, and hung his head. If he had been several feet shorter and at least half as wide, he would be a spitting image of one of Snow White's dwarves.

"Doesn't look like there's much left to salvage," Regina remarked offhandedly. "Except…" She thumbed through the fabric until she found the delicate crystal beading at the front of the bodice. "Here." And she ripped the dress in two. Little John's mouth gaped in horror. Several crystal teardrops scattered about into the water with tiny plopping sounds, but the majority of them remained intact in a lattice of threadwork, which she folded into Little John's hand now.

He looked aghast yet delighted all at once. "Milady, I couldn't accept this."

Regina closed his fist firmly over the crystals and they disappeared from sight. "But you must," she smiled. "And please call me Regina." Shifting gears then, "Can I ask you a question, Little John?"

"Anything, Miss Regina," he responded happily, opening his hand just a sliver and taking a peek at his newfound treasure.

"What…happened, last night?"

Little John looked up in surprise. "Milady doesn't remember?"

"There are a lot of things about that night that just seem to have…slipped through the cracks." Regina tried to pull off a sheepish look. It was not a look she wore often, but it seemed convincing enough to her jovial companion. "From the sound of it, I was having…a little too much fun."

He chuckled boisterously. "Aye, milady, you were in rare form. Couldn't keep your flagon filled fast enough, and you were dancing on the tables—even dragged poor Will Scarlet up there with you at one point—the bar wenches were furious—oh, no, I mean, that is it say—bar…m-maidens—" he fumbled clumsily, face bright red as a tomato.

Regina gave him a minute to recover. Soon, he continued, "The whole lot of the tavern couldn't keep their eyes off you, the Sheriff in particular, and it made Robin Hood right nervous. He kept trying to persuade you down, told you to stop drawing so much attention to yourself. You didn't take kindly to that," he smiled at the memory, "declared that you wouldn't take orders from no thief who didn't even steal for himself, and stormed off somewhere. That's when the Sheriff...made his interest in you known."

She had suspected as much.

"Robin was…I'd never seen him so angry. At first I just thought him jealous, mind you, but when it was clear you wanted nothing to do with the Sheriff, and he kept…trying to put his hands on you, the look in Robin's eye—" Little John furtively scanned the bushes and his voice dropped to a dead whisper, as though even saying it aloud were cause enough to be arrested. "He came over and hit the Sheriff so hard I swear I saw his head spin clean round his neck. Hence the, ahem," he pointed at the remains of her dress, "bloody mess there. Sorry, about that."

"How did he get away with it?" Regina asked in a hushed tone to match his own.

"You, milady," and she was startled. "I don't know what you said, but you convinced the Sheriff to leave Robin be. I also suppose he was embarrassed something awful about the whole ordeal and didn't want word getting back round to his betrothed."

_Maid Marian_, Regina thought, and the name was like a drop of acid in her brain. She winced, felt her face contort with the painful reminder of the reality that she knew still awaited her, if she could figure out how the hell she was supposed to return to it.

Little John carefully pocketed his crystals. "If you ask me, milady, Robin hasn't been himself all week. I don't think he would've had us stick around here for as long as he did, if it weren't for you." And then he looked too shocked by his own words to utter any more.

"A week," Regina echoed.

"Can't believe it's been that long already," said Little John, eager to divert the subject away from his admission about Robin. "Feels like only yesterday when you first stepped into that tavern. I thought surely you'd cast some spell on him, the way he couldn't stop look—" He broke off suddenly, looking furious with himself, muttering something about it not being his place to gossip and it was all speculation anyway and please don't repeat any of this to Robin, and that was that.

* * *

Regina had a lot to mull over on her walk back, guided by the soft glow of fire through the trees and the merry rumblings of men trading tales well into the night. Her conversation with Little John had been fairly informative, and yet at the same time not very helpful at all. She smiled as she recalled how she had left him staring intently into the water, sifting carefully through the mud trying to locate any of the wayward crystals.

Hearty chortling and chitchat drifted through the trees. She was picking her way through a particularly stubborn patch of thorn bushes that blocked her path when one of the voices grew more distinct than the others, and her movements stilled at the familiar lilt.

"We'll leave at first light tomorrow."

"Will she be joining us?" Another voice, timid. He must have known a quicker way back to camp from the water.

"I don't think so, Little John," Robin responded lowly. "It's…it's not a good idea."

"Forgive me, Robin, but I don't understand. I thought—" a pause, and she could picture Little John carefully considering his choice of words. "You have strong feelings for this woman." It wasn't a question. "We all see it."

"Be that as it may, I cannot allow her to accompany us on our journey. She belongs here. She belongs with—"

"She must've had a good reason to run away from the palace," Little John insisted heatedly. "Perhaps the King was unkind or, God forbid, even cruel! How can we leave her so defenseless against such a fate? Don't you think it's our duty to protect—"

"Little John." And the name was uttered with such force that it stopped his companion midsentence. "I suggest you say your goodbyes, when you can."

"Have you even told her?" An accusation.

Robin's silence was answer enough.

The crunch of leaves and twigs sounded beneath a heavy set of footfalls, carrying the conversation back to camp along with it. For a long time afterward all Regina heard was the chirping of night crickets and the aching thud, thud, thud of her damn heartbeat. Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her hand, fighting the urge to plunge them into her chest and dull the pain. Then there was a shift in the wind and she realized Robin was still standing there, a lone silhouette isolated against a backdrop of trees. He turned, defeat evident in his posture, and began heading the way she had come, toward the river.

* * *

He was standing in the water with his back to her, but an almost imperceptible tensing of his shoulders told her that he had sensed her presence. Maybe he had been aware of it the entire time she was following him. Maybe he had even meant to lead her here. She couldn't be sure of anything anymore, apart from one.

"You're leaving," she stated.

"Yes." He did not turn around.

"And you really think I'm going to stay behind willingly."

He rubbed a hand tiredly over his eyes.

"You could at least have the decency to explain why to my face," and suddenly the rage simmering within had propelled her down the rocky banks and into the water alongside him. She grabbed his arm with such a surprising amount of force that it set them both off balance, and his hands sought purchase on her hips while her forearms came to rest in the crook of his elbows, and as they steadied each other his look of despair came into sharp relief.

"You have no idea what kind of torture this past week has been."

"Well I'm sorry my company has been such a thorn in your side," she hissed contemptuously.

"Do not dismiss this for what it is," he said, the fierceness in his eyes matched by his grip at her waist. "Don't insult me by pretending not to know—"

"Know what? That you want nothing to do with me?"

"This is _treason_." He sounded absolutely distraught. "It will endanger us all. Me, my Merry Men—"

She turned away. He grabbed her chin.

"You most of all, don't you understand? If people came to realize you were in the company of thieves, they may stop at nothing to claim you for their own greedy purposes. Or if the King himself learned you had come with us willingly—would you describe him as a forgiving man?"

She couldn't say; so she said nothing.

Robin was shaking his head, chastising himself. "I should not have let you remain here as long as I did. I should have—"

"What you should have done is turn me in for that pile of gold," Regina cut in scathingly. "And if you're going to leave me here, you may as well do it anyway, make the most out of all your _troubles_."

He looked truly outraged now. "Do you honestly think—"

"I don't know what to think anymore," she returned with equal fire. "Why _did_ you let me stay?"

He couldn't find the words to form a proper excuse, but his eyes had already told her everything that he didn't dare say aloud, and she knew he was losing this battle. The damn outlaw was just too honorable for his own good.

"You have a husband," he said finally, and the acknowledgement of it made him visibly cringe.

"I may have a husband, but his palace is my prison. My marriage might as well be a death sentence."

"And you have a kingdom. Why—_why_—would you want to sacrifice that, for this, for anything? How can a life spent outrunning the law be preferable to being queen?"

He really didn't understand. She had to make him understand. "Don't you see," she started, but the words were broken and rough around the edges. Her fingers clutched at his arms in desperation.

"I'm but a common thief, your majesty. You'll have to spell it out for me."

Her hands were trembling when they came up to grasp his face. He exhaled shakily and, after a second that seemed to last a lifetime, leaned into her touch, eyes closing as his lips brushed against her wrist. His hand came up to close around hers, fingers interlocking and holding firm as he dragged stubble across skin and pressed an open-mouthed kiss into the palm of her hand. Her eyes prickled with unshed tears, and it was hard to breathe around the lump that had formed in her throat. She watched, captivated, as his mouth traveled from palm to finger, enveloping the pad of her thumb in the warmth of his kiss, and her eyes nearly shut at the feel of his tongue on her skin, but she forced them back open, wanting to capture this moment and hold it close to her heart forever.

She still didn't know why she had been sent here. To hell with that. And even if she figured out how to get back—get back? Get back to what? What then? And leave this, him, them, behind? _I don't care. I don't care anymore. Please, just, kiss him. Just—let him see_—

But all thoughts dissolved into nothingness when his grip on her hand suddenly pulled her to him, closing what little distance had remained; they stood there in the water, foreheads pressed together, nose to nose, breathing one another in, and then he was kissing her with a fierceness that set her soul aflame. He held nothing back this time; his hands seized her face, fingers tangling in her hair, and tugged roughly to slant her head just how he wanted it, mouth hungrily devouring hers in a clash of tongues and teeth. She gladly relinquished all control to him, and it was all she could do to grasp the lapels of his shirt and hold on for dear life, because this kiss, this man, would surely be the end of her.

A deep gravelly sound escaped his throat as his lips left hers for a brief moment to suck in a ragged breath. "It had to be your choice," he whispered, voice raw, mouth hot against her ear, "it had to be yours, not mine," and he pressed the side of his face into her hair, inhaling deeply.

"Well I choose you," she said, "I already chose you," and she was crying, each blink freeing a new rush of tears and his lips kissed them away, one by one, and then moved to their source, brushing gently against her eyelids, as his hands cradled her head and his thumbs caressed her cheeks.

She'd been falling for him, slowly, without her even knowing it, for an entire year; and then suddenly, without warning, tumbling madly headfirst into his open embrace, for barely a week, before his arms were no longer there to catch her and hope had been shattered like porcelain on a hardwood floor. She felt his kiss lingering at the corner of her mouth and then take hold of her bottom lip, luxuriating in its fullness, unhurried, like there would be all the time left in the world to explore the rest; and the broken shards reversed course, found their place, fit back into each other, became whole again.

* * *

"Absolutely not," said Robin with terrifying finality.

"But, Robin—" Regina could almost swear that Little John was pouting. The man had been as ecstatic as a overgrown child earlier when he accidentally stumbled upon her standing outside her tent, Robin greeting her with a morning kiss, holding her hands close to his chest, making it clear that she was most definitely not going anywhere that he and the Merry Men weren't. And from that joy a brilliant, ludicrous idea had sprung forth.

"We couldn't have asked for more favorable circumstances than these!" Little John protested now, a boiling kettle of excitement. "With the King's guard spread thin throughout the lands searching for the Queen—"

"I'm sure he's not searching that hard," Regina muttered under her breath, and she felt Robin's hand at her waist give a gentle squeeze.

"His castle's defenses are weakened. And Miss Regina was in his service for years before she escaped! Who better than to sneak us in and—"

"Not happening, Little John."

Undeterred, Little John chewed his lip thoughtfully for a moment before changing tactics. "I think milady deserves to have a say in this."

"Me!" uttered Regina, shocked, and then no fewer than twenty sets of eyes were fixed upon her, as the Merry Men awaited her response. To her bemusement they seemed to be channeling the Lost Boys she had encountered in Neverland, sorely lacking in motherly love and guidance. It was a far cry from her Evil Queen days, flanked by all the black knights at her beck and call.

Robin's grip on her tightened.

But they looked so eager, Little John most of all, with the promises of a royal vault too vast to imagine glinting in their eyes, and none of them understood Robin's adamant refusal of such an opportunity, the fear and hesitation underlying the firmness of foot he had put down. She found that she couldn't bear to be the one to disappoint them. She pictured the look on Leopold's face, when he realized he had finally fallen victim to the ruthless plundering of the infamously charitable outlaw, and it almost seemed worth it. And then she envisioned how Henry's jaw would drop to hear the story of her teaming up with Robin Hood to rob from her own castle, and it absolutely was.

Regina smiled.

* * *

**A/N:** Oops, this chapter kind of ran away from me again.

Just out of curiosity and for reasons not at all related to this story, did you guys watch _Once Upon a Time in Wonderland_ when it aired? Again, not related. Not even a little bit. Not yet, anyway. (Okay, there may have been a hint of it earlier. But it may not become a full-blown thing, unless you guys want it to happen. If this sounds too cryptic then just ignore me.)

And, I realized after the fact that there was an awful lot of smiling happening in this chapter. It probably won't stay that way for long, just a warning. It's time to crank up the angst. Anyway let me know how you're feeling so far :) Your thoughts are my crack. I'm so grateful for all of you…thank you, thank you for reading!


	4. Heist

Robin was exceptionally grumpy and made no attempt to hide the fact from her.

"I do not think this is a good idea," he said for the thirtieth time since their meeting with the Merry Men, who had all gone off in quite an excited uproar to make provisions for their trip. Regina herself was busy collecting various potentially helpful-looking objects from around her tent to dump into a makeshift knapsack. She might find some use for a wooden fork when breaking into her own castle, right? At best, a handy weapon; at worst, just in case she needed to brush her hair? She shrugged and added it to her growing pile. It wasn't like she'd done anything like this before.

The thought thrilled her beyond belief.

She remembered vividly the last conversation she would have had with Rumplestiltskin in this…sideways reality, or whatever you wanted to call it. She'd skipped one of their magic lessons; he'd interrupted her dinner and skipped straight to feeding all the grim, black fears that had infiltrated her heart like a slow-acting poison. His ominous words, uttered like a curse, spoken with that impishly cruel look on his face—_the darkness likes how you taste, dearie; it doesn't mind the bitter_—_and now that it's started the meal, it's going to finish it_—when all she wanted was freedom. And then, later that same day, Tinker Bell had helped her find it, when she stepped foot inside that tavern.

Robin Hood was her freedom.

"It could be fun," she offered now as bent down to examine some short but hefty branches and a piece of twine, wondering if she could fashion them into a set of nunchuks. She felt young and silly in a way she hadn't for years, giddy with the same anticipation that struck her whenever she snuck away to the stables under her mother's hawkeyed scrutiny.

It made her feel alive again.

When Robin didn't respond right away, she threw him a coy backward glance over her shoulder. He was scowling.

"I fail to see how one could classify the risk of losing you in the very place you sought to escape as 'fun' for anyone," he tallied back.

"You won't lose me," and, feeling emboldened all of a sudden, she abandoned her packing project to slink over to him. His arms were folded over his chest in displeasure but gave way with little resistance at her gentle tugging, and she enveloped herself in his embrace.

"Little John's right. I know the castle like the back of my hand," she said, pressing her chin into his chest as she looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. He released a deep sigh through his nose and tightened his hold at her waist, but he still looked not the least bit mollified.

"Well I know all too well the risks that come with the job like the back of mine, my queen," and his sardonic use of the term seemed to have become his thing whenever he was cross with her, and she smiled, because they had a thing now.

"Don't tell me you've never been tempted to steal from the King before."

"I've never wanted for anything that belonged to the King, until I met you," Robin said, and the sentiment was so beautiful despite the fact that he expressed it so angrily, she had to hide her smile into his shirt knowing it would only infuriate him further to see it; "and now that you're here I'm not bloody likely to go waltzing into his own home and essentially hand his wife back to him on a silver platter."

"I'm not some exotic dish to be feasted on at a banquet," she said tartly, and if he hadn't been so incensed she knew he would've jumped on that opportunity to make some naughty retort about how she was exactly that.

As it was, her persistent nonchalance about the whole thing seemed to only upset him more. "It's far too dangerous," he continued heatedly. "If we get caught there will be hell to pay."

"Then we won't get caught." She pressed a slow, lingering kiss to his mouth, and he was just vexed enough to not return it right away, but her tongue slid out to taste his lower lip and he gave in for a brief moment, pulling her close. She felt her heels rise weightlessly off the ground and fought the ridiculous urge to kick her foot back behind her like a smitten Disney princess.

"Now," she whispered huskily, tracing his jawline with the tip of her nose and planting an open-mouthed kiss into the hollow of his neck, "what were you saying?"

She felt a grumble resonate through his chest and laughed. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

"Vixen," he growled, and without warning he'd scooped her up from behind the knees and lifted her body clean into the air. Her mind reasoned to itself that of course he wouldn't drop her, but her arms flew around to encircle his neck anyway, and he turned to smile into her cheek, depositing a quick kiss there before he pulled back and raised a playfully suggestive eyebrow at her.

"If we're to go on this reckless, foolhardy mission, then I plan to waste not another moment of our time together arguing with you."

* * *

It was not more than a day's ride to the castle. Their journey commenced just before dawn with a lengthy gathering, held upon Robin's insistence, in which Regina mapped out in intricate detail the secret entrances and underground passageways that would be of greatest use to them. (She left out the part about how they were much more accessible now that they weren't sealed by blood magic and other such deterrents she had put in place as the Evil Queen.) They saddled up and rode out just as the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, without much issue, apart from Regina's hesitation when Robin had approached her with a beautiful white horse at the reins.

"Oh," she said, holding out a tentative hand that the horse snuffed at eagerly in search for sugar cubes. "It's just…it's been a while."

Robin gave her a funny look. "You rode Shadowfax not three days ago."

"Right. Of course," said Regina, and was she imagining things or did Shadowfax look skeptical? The mare tapped a hoof and exhaled loudly through her nose, as though sighing in exasperation. But Regina stood there looking unsure until finally Robin gathered her up at the waist, coaxing one heeled foot into the stirrup and the other to swing her body around into the saddle. Shadowfax bobbed her head encouragingly. Robin hoisted himself up soon after, tucking Regina snugly in between his thighs and against his chest, and if he noticed the sudden hitch in her breath he had the decency not to comment on it. But she could feel the smile he pressed into her hair, and she wondered if he hadn't somehow planned it this way all along, just to reassure himself that she was there with him for as long as he had control over it.

"Maybe while we're at it," he spoke lowly, stubble tickling her ear, "we can find you some more appropriate runaway attire to change into," and she laughed, thinking about the utter impracticality of her entire wardrobe awaiting her back in her bedchambers. In truth, there were some things she wouldn't mind grabbing from there, since running away hadn't exactly been the first thing on her mind when she'd last left it.

Little John brought his horse up to a trot alongside Shadowfax and spent the better part of the late morning and early afternoon regaling them with stories from his childhood; from the sound of it, even then he'd been no more diminutive than his name implied, and no less gentle-hearted than he was now. Regina marveled at the ease with which her smile reached both ears, and she felt a pleasant flush heat up her neck every time the vibration of Robin's chuckle reminded her how their bodies fit together like a two-piece puzzle.

He was guiding Shadowfax one-handed, with the other wrapped around Regina's waist. Spurred on by the warm security of his hard lean body at her back, she took the reins from him, which he gladly exchanged for an extra squeeze to her hip. Shadowfax, sensing the change of hands, took off suddenly from the group in a delighted gallop, putting more and more distance behind them by the second. Robin released a startled hand to rein her in, but Regina held fast, beaming, and nothing had ever come as naturally to her as this and she'd almost forgotten how it felt to fly.

* * *

They arrived by nightfall, securing the horses at the edge of the forest just outside the palace gardens. Little John had been right about the guards, or they were simply lazier than she remembered; there wasn't a single one in sight. With their luck, Regina thought, Leopold and Snow wouldn't even be home, as they were prone to being gone on one of their father-daughter trips for weeks at a time.

Still, the sight of Robin Hood and his Merry Men tiptoeing across the moonlit gardens was one Regina wouldn't soon forget.

Following her guidance, they snuck through a grate and into a system of tunnels leading beneath the kitchens with relative ease. The smell of spoiled food, bodily waste and other rubbish soaking the stone path was fairly unpleasant; but nothing went terribly awry, apart from Little John letting out a startled little yelp at a shadow lurking in the corner, which turned out to be a cat, looking very unimpressed by the large hairy man making a mad dash to get away from it.

"Can't stand those creatures," he muttered by way of apology when Robin gave him an amused look.

They eventually found themselves at the source of the stench, or rather, directly beneath it; a medieval trash chute of sorts, with a thin, precarious-looking ladder dangling down the side from a vast darkness above.

"Right then," spoke up one of the men—a boy, really. He was in his late teens and had the drowsy face of a angel, with downcast eyes and the droopy eyebrows to match. But he had a devil's wit about him and, Regina suspected, the charm of one too, when it came to the ladies. From her understanding, he'd joined Robin's Merry Men not more than a fortnight before she had. "That is bloody disgusting. Can't think of a better place to put a ladder, really."

Robin clapped a hand on his shoulder, causing the boy to stumble forward. "Stay strong, Will. I suspect it was put in as a precautionary measure, should the passage ever need to be manually unclogged," and he began to lead his men up without so much as a grimace. Will Scarlet looked horrified but slowly followed suit.

The ladder brought them straight into the inner bailey of the castle, within the privy chambers of the servants' quarters. Regina was the last to emerge, and Robin took her hand.

"Little John knows the way from here," she said in stage whisper, and the man nodded solemnly; he'd spent the second half of their journey rendering a map based on Regina's instructions, more for the other men's benefit than his own because he'd already committed them to memory. "I'm going to my room to grab some things."

"Not alone, you're not," said Robin, readjusting his quiver. But she had figured as much and was already dragging him by the hand down the corridor. "We'll meet you back in the forest by the strike of twelve," he said to Little John in vehement undertones, "and under no circumstances are you to delay your departure any further than that." They slipped beyond a balustrade and disappeared up the stairs.

"Wait, but, hold on, they're going the wrong way," Will said. "The servants' quarters are right here." He turned round to find that the other men had already gone. "Oh bloody hell," he muttered, and took off after them.

* * *

"So this is where you live." Robin Hood was leaning against the elaborate stone base of the archway that framed the entrance to her bedchambers, arms crossed as he examined their surroundings with a curious eye. They hadn't heard a peep or encountered a single soul on their way up, confirming her suspicions that Leopold and Snow were indeed out of town.

"Lived," she corrected with a smile, rifling through her wardrobe for a more sensible pair of shoes. She was beginning to think the chances of finding anything that didn't have at least a three-inch heel rather unlikely.

"And this…" a few steps forward brought him to the corner of her bed, "is where you slept."

Regina looked against her better judgment. He was playing with the fringe on one of her pillows. She hadn't slept in that bed in ages—nor could she recall the last time she'd owned something in such a nauseating shade of pretty princess pink—but the familiarity of him standing there, like it was the most natural place in the world for him to be, was infinitely alluring to her. She could practically feel the pillows molding to her body as she grabbed hold of him by the cloak and brought him close, and he'd been divested of all those bothersome layers of clothing and they were wrapped between her sheets—

She hurriedly turned away to hide the desire coloring her cheeks. "I found something to change into, at least," she said, and was mortified to hear her voice not quite working properly. Clearing her throat, she held the dress up for him to see—a flattering enough bodice with gauzy billowing sleeves, not unlike what she'd worn into the tavern, but this one lacked the heavy sheen of opulence and the delicate crystal beading; it was made of a lightweight almost jersey-knit material, soft but not silken, that flowed with every subtle change in the air around it.

"Don't look," she said sternly, and stepped behind a four-paneled room divider to change.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it." She could make out his silhouette through the thin ivory canvas, could practically hear that stupid beautiful smirk of his, and she put her arm through the wrong sleeve twice in her hurry to avoid giving him a striptease with her shadow.

When she stepped back out, Robin had found her crown, gold and sapphires, the same one she wore in the wanted posters. He gave her a small smile, almost shy, and stepped forward to rest it in her hair.

"What are you doing," she laughed, and then blinked in shock when his body folded into a deep bow, an arm sweeping grandly out in front of him to take her hand. "Will your majesty do this poor, common thief the honor of giving him this dance?"

"You're being absolutely ridiculous," said Regina, rolling her eyes, and he twirled her up into the air in response. She had to clamp her mouth shut to contain the embarrassing sound of delight that threatened to escape as he set her gently back on her feet. He pulled her close at the waist with one hand, his other grasping hers to his shoulder. She felt him humming against her ear, and then he was singing to her softly, in a smooth low tenor, a folk ballad she didn't recognize and at the same time felt like she'd been hearing her whole life. She put a hand to his chest, enjoying the way each note thrummed straight through to her fingertips, and she realized with a start she'd never heard him sing before, didn't even know he could.

Her eyelids drifted closed, her forehead nestling under his chin. This Robin Hood was so…different from hers—so impulsive, so carefree, without having ever experienced the sobering insights of parenthood or the true knowledge of loss. She wondered how it really would've turned out in the end had she met him in the tavern that night, without the knowledge of what would follow when she didn't. The darkness hadn't completely overtaken her then, though Rumple's words had proven accurate enough later on; would Robin truly have been able to save her from it? Or was this all just a fantasy she was willingly losing herself to further and further, because it was easier to regret having not done something, than to accept the blame for everything else she _had_ done after?

And could this Robin ever forgive her if he knew the truth? There was another difference—her Robin had cared for every bit of her, and had known every bit of her, all the way down to her dark past and its bitter aftertaste. But then there was the rub, wasn't it, because he was no longer hers, and it wasn't enough that his wife was back, but that she, Regina, was the reason why he'd lost her in the first place. Even if Marian hadn't been executed at her hand—and now she would never know the truth that no longer even mattered, thanks to Emma Swan's meddling—the woman had still ended up separated from her family because of the threat Regina had made to her life.

Either way you looked at it, really, could the timing ever truly be right for them?

_Yes. It is now_, said a wicked voice in the back of her head. _Just admit it. Love may be strength, but it's _your_ weakness. You know this is wrong, and yet—_

"I never want this to end," she whispered, to herself, and into Robin's chest. His lips traced her hairline.

"Regina? Is that you? Are you back?" The voice was muffled by the thick mahogany door on the other side of the archway, but she would recognize its sweet, cloying cadence anywhere.

It belonged to Snow White.

Regina had Robin backed up against her balcony rail in an instant. "You have to go!"

"I'm not leaving you here," he said, looking alarmed but stubborn.

The idiot! She wanted to smash her fists against his chest.

"Regina?" Snow's voice filtered through and echoed across the vast expanse of her room again, and Regina felt like screaming. They were running out of time.

"I'll be right there, dear!" Regina called, and then turned back to Robin, who still refused to budge. "Go!" she yelled in a frantic whisper. "If you get caught—if they find you here—" She left all the hypothetical horrors unsaid. She honestly didn't know what Leopold would do if he discovered them together, if he knew that she had personally led a band of thieves straight to his treasure vault. Really, no idea; there had been no precedent for it. But Snow…

Decades worth of progress rebuilding that relationship from emotional ruin had been literally erased the instant she'd woken up in Robin's tent. This Snow didn't have the benefit of drawing wisdom from the future, nor the emotional capacity, to fathom the extent of her involvement in destroying Regina's first chance at happiness. If she had a hand in her second—

"I will never be able to forgive myself," she said finally.

"And you think I will, if I abandon you now?"

"You're not abandoning me if I'm telling you to go." The words carried a certain irony that was, of course, lost on him.

He still looked unconvinced.

The castle clock tower began to chime. _Twelve o'clock, and all is well._

"We'll see each other again," she promised desperately. "We _will_ find each other."

Did that really come out of her mouth just now? Her Snow would be beaming like an idiot to hear it. But she doubted the current one would be nearly as appreciative.

It was all she could do not to shove him right over the edge. He was quite cat-like in many regards; she knew in her heart he would land on both feet. "Please, go, now." Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Don't make me pull the queen card."

Still looking torn, he swung his body over to stand on the other side of the wrought-iron rail, anchoring his feet beneath the bottom rung, and grabbed her face into his hands. "Meet me back at the tavern," he said forcefully, and she tried to nod her consent but his grip was so tight. "If you're not there by dawn, I _am_ coming back for you." He crushed his lips to hers in a desperate, bruising kiss.

There was a scuffling sound behind her.

"Go!" she said urgently, and he dropped down, his cloak billowing out and suspending midair as he landed firmly with two feet on the courtyard ground. She released a sharp sigh of relief.

He stole one last glance up at her, and then he was gone.

"Regina?"

She whipped around so suddenly a hand shot out to keep herself from tumbling over in a manner far less graceful than Robin had.

"Snow," Regina began, cautiously, and the air was punched right out of her lungs as Snow ran straight into her, trapping her in a small but fierce hug.

"I missed you," said Snow, plaintively, and Regina actually felt a funny twinge in her chest. "Where did you go? You were gone for so long."

Regina opened her mouth and then, not knowing what to say, closed it. Her arms came around to rest awkwardly on the girl's shoulders.

Snow, clutching at her dress, looked up, and her eyes were wet.

"Regina, who was that man kissing you?"

* * *

**A/N:** Hi friends! Maybe not a whole lot happening in this one; needed to set the stage for the next… :)! Hope you had fun reading though. Please please let me know how you're feeling, I'm so curious to hear what you think! I honestly can never tell reading my own stuff what works and what doesn't, and your comments really help me out a lot with that. To my lovely guest reviewers whom I can't direct-message, thank you so much, and I look forward to hearing from you guys with every chapter!

Anyone catch my _Lord of the Rings_ reference? And what's a Disney fairy tale without a really awesome Disney horse that basically thinks it's a dog?

To dear **locksleyss**, this is my version of Sean Maguire serenading Lana in the Enchanted Forest, just for you :)


	5. Second Chances

"Regina, who was that man kissing you?"

Her heart took a nosedive, for probably the third time in as many days. _No. This cannot be happening again._

"He was just—" but she couldn't form words into an excuse, couldn't bring herself to downplay the truth with a dismissive comment. Snow wasn't an idiot, even as a child. Stupidly idealistic, maybe, but not an idiot.

Regina looked at her; really looked at her. She admittedly had not been particularly present during this period of immense change in Snow's life, emotionally or otherwise; the darkness had already tasted her, as Rumple had so aptly predicted, but she was the one who'd sealed her own fate. And yet, here she was now, again, poised for a do-over; wasn't that supposed to mean something? She was startled to see the girl was already well on her way to becoming a woman—with the rest of her body finally starting to catch up with the gangly awkwardness of her limbs—and she seemed to be developing the keen observation of one as well.

"Were you with him the whole time you've been gone?" There was no accusation in Snow's tone, no judgment in her eyes—just curiosity, with the same earnest touch of concern that Regina had always found so grating even in its grown up version.

She inhaled with a sharpness that cut straight through her lungs; she felt like she was finally coming up for air after drowning in the darkness for so, so long, and she'd forgotten the unbearable lightness of being able to breathe again. This didn't just have to be her second chance, she realized—it could be Snow's, too. And she wanted to give it to her, needed to give it to her. Needed to know that it was possible. Had they come so far only to doom themselves into repeating the past?

"Yes." There was just enough of a quiver in her voice that she was compelled to say it again, with more conviction this time. "Yes, Snow, I was with that man."

A second of silence for Snow to process her response, and then, "Does he make you as happy as Daniel did?"

Regina's mouth closed, opened, closed again, and it was a struggle to swallow the bitterness she tasted suddenly, almost reflexively, to hear his name uttered with such innocence by the very one who had condemned him to the past tense.

It was an impossible question to answer; there was no fair comparison. The euphoria of first love, and the gratitude, inseparable from the guilt, of getting a chance at a second, when fate seemed so determined not to let it happen? No; comparing the two would be like asking who her favorite Henry was, or which of the Charmings was the more devoted champion of hopeless causes. There was no right or wrong answer, because it was such an absurd question that it didn't have any answer, at all.

Regina knelt down in front of Snow, but how could she forget, she wasn't that little girl anymore, and Snow was towering over her now, so in turn the princess lowered herself to the ground cross-legged, and their skirts pooled together in a rich sea of fabric as they sat facing each other in strangely comfortable silence.

"After Daniel was taken from me—" Regina faltered, hands smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles in her dress, "the same way your mother was taken from you—" and she looked up as Snow looked down at her own hands, fiddling with her own dress. "I never thought I could be happy again. No matter how much people tried to tell me otherwise. And then, after a time, I didn't think I even deserved it." She spoke slowly, reflectively, but she could practically feel her thoughts fighting each other in their race to the surface; and it was amazing, the ease with which she found herself saying these things, and she wondered if she could ever achieve the same level of intimacy with the Snow of her present again, after what Emma had done.

"But everyone deserves happiness, Regina," said Snow, shaking her head like she'd just heard the silliest thing. "You most of all."

Of all the things Regina might've expected Snow to say, it certainly wasn't that. The déjà vu was…unsettling. "Why's that?"

Snow's eyes were warm and innocent but at the same time so old and wise beyond their years. "Because you've lost so much."

_Because of you_, Regina wanted to think, but found that she couldn't—well, maybe she could, but only half-heartedly—and even if this Snow didn't fully understand yet, Regina did, and it was as liberating as it was painful, and would always be painful, but also more and more tolerable, less and less paralyzing.

She thought of Robin, and he'd barely been gone half an hour and she already missed him terribly. God, she couldn't even fathom now how she'd spent half a lifetime without him in it; and then the week following Marian's return, when nothing hurt more than not being with him except the knowledge that he did so by choice.

Snow was watching her carefully. "Do you think you might start to believe it now?"

"Well." Regina smiled, and if there were tears prickling the backs of her eyes she would never admit to it. She reached over and clasped Snow's hands with her own. "Someone convinced me that it was possible after all."

Snow returned her smile with a megawatted one of her own, and her ignorance of what the future had in store for them gave Regina the strength to answer her fully, truthfully.

"He does make me very happy," and her voice was a baritone of emotion.

Snow's face screwed up in deep thought. "And you can't be as happy with my father." It was more or less a statement, but she said it with the hope that maybe just maybe it wasn't true.

"I think deep down you know the answer to that." Just like she used to say to Henry whenever he encountered a particularly difficult math problem in his homework set. Her heart ached at the memory.

And she could see it in the way resignation won over surprise on Snow's face, but it must have been no less difficult for the poor thing to hear it confirmed by the source. Maybe she had thought once that Snow had acted out of a selfish desire to keep Regina all to herself; but she had been manipulated enough by her mother over the years to recognize now that she was not the only victim in Cora's cunning game of persuasion.

And _she_ knew, deep down, that her heartless mother was the one to truly blame, the sole reason why they had both lost the one thing in the world they loved most.

Regina tightened her hold on Snow's trembling hands. "You and your father still have each other." It felt odd to be the one to reassure her for a change, but it felt right. "You're family."

"But you're family now too!" Snow said stubbornly. Her lip downturned in what would have been a childish pout had her eyes not spoken so plainly of genuine grief. "I missed you so much while you were gone." She didn't think to mention how her father had reacted to Regina's prolonged absence, and Regina didn't think to ask. "You're…you're the only mother I have left."

Regina's heart twisted painfully. God, this entire experience was really just putting her through the emotional wringer. She had never felt or acted like a mother to Snow, even when she had been expected to be one. Back then, "mother" had meant a lot of things to her—love unrequited, constant discontent, the inevitability of her own failure—but none of those things were what Snow would've wanted or deserved from her.

Now, though, she _was_ a mother. She was Henry's mother. And Rumple was wrong; she could fly from her fate. She had. And the darkness would try to lure her in, but as someone wise and so full of hope had once told her, she would continue to fight it, every day.

Even so, Snow would never be a daughter to her. It didn't feel quite right.

"Don't think of me as a mother," Regina told her now. "Think of me as your…sister."

It was an acceptable alternative to Snow, who beamed through watery eyes and clutched Regina's hands like a lifeline.

"Your grumpy older sister who occasionally wants to kill you but can never quite bring herself to do it," Regina went on, and Snow let a giggle escape through her quiet sobbing.

"You and I," sighed Regina, "we have a long road ahead of us. But at the end of it, you know what happens?"

Snow was blinking furiously to squeeze the tears back in. "What?"

"My happiness still means everything to you. And you're…you're my family too. See?" She tickled Snow's chin. "Some things never change."

"Regina! There you are!"

"Oh what now?" Regina muttered, and realized with a start the voice was coming from the direction of her balcony, and it was distinctly female. Actually, it sounded positively spritely.

Snow's jaw was all the way to the floor.

"A fairy!" she breathed.

"Regina, I've been looking all over for you," said Tinker Bell, tiny wings propelling her into a hover by Regina's ear. "Where have you been? I was so worried when I couldn't find you here after—" and then she noticed they had company and seemed to think it best not to reveal any more.

"Who's this?" Tink eyed Snow curiously, and then comprehension dawned. "It's her, isn't it? The girl you were telling me about."

Snow was still openly gaping at her. In a blinding green millisecond of light Tinker Bell stood before them at normal life-sized height, and it was only then that Regina fully registered it—wings. The fairy still had her wings. She reached out a hand and gripped Tink's arm, overcome with something she recognized to be gratitude, something she had never otherwise experienced as wholly as when her kiss to Henry had turned out to be one of true love.

Before she had a chance to process what her body was doing, she'd stood and pulled Tinker Bell into a chokehold of a hug.

"Oh!" said Tinker Bell, startled but pleasantly so, and her delighted laugh was like a breeze through a field of wind chimes.

"See, what did I tell you about pixie dust?" She pulled back, gave Regina's shoulders a squeeze, winked. "It never fails." And she had it all wrong, or at least only half of it right; but Regina was glad that this Tinker Bell would never have to know the loss of her wings at Regina's hands.

"What does she mean, Regina?" Snow was asking then with no small amount of wonder. She looked like she was itching to touch Tinker Bell's wings, but refrained out of proper royal decorum.

"Regina has met her soulmate," Tinker Bell said, very seriously. "The man with the lion tattoo."

"The man with the lion tattoo," Snow repeated in utter fascination.

"Yes," said Tink, nodding excitedly, and she was grabbing Snow's hands and pulling her up to stand. "Fairy magic led her to him! They are destined to be together." She tilted her head at Snow in sudden contemplation. "Do—do you understand that?"

"I do," said Snow solemnly. "All I want is for Regina to be happy."

The moon was high above the castle turrets now, reflecting light off of Tinker Bell's skirts and casting their shadows in a hazy green glow.

"I have to go," said Regina, feeling anxiety of an unknown source. "I have to meet Rob—him—back at—"

"Well by all means, leave this godforsaken place!" Tinker Bell urged, then winced an apology in Snow's direction. "What are you waiting for?"

Regina looked uncertainly back at Snow, who instantly threw her arms around Regina's neck. "Go," she said, the word soft and warm against her skin, "go and be happy." Regina felt moisture dampening the fabric at her shoulder, and she pressed a hand onto the back of Snow's head, laid a kiss in her hair.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Snow's eyes were distinctly puffy as she took a step back, whether to give herself space to recover or Regina room to breathe, it was hard to tell.

"Come on," Regina said to Tinker Bell. She didn't know why she automatically assumed Tink was coming with her, but the fairy fell into step beside her without question. She advanced to the balcony—it was the fastest way out, and the least likely route to be populated by guards—and spared one last glance at Snow, who was standing in the shadows now, but her watery smile brightened the entire room.

"Oh I don't know about this," said Tink, peering over the balcony edge with some trepidation.

But Regina couldn't let another moment pass in indecision. She took the leap.

* * *

Upon landing, it occurred to her she had no idea how to get back to the tavern in an acceptably speedy manner.

"You didn't happen to steal any more pixie dust, did you?" Regina asked, and she already knew the answer before Tink was even on the ground beside her, shaking her head. "Damn it," she muttered, an agitated hand applying pressure to her temples.

The muffled but steady sound of something heavy thumping rapidly against the grass reached her ears, and then turned into a clack, clack, clack against the stone path as its source approached in a gallop.

"Shadowfax!" Regina exclaimed. The mare came to an abrupt halt and put a wet nose urgently to her ear. She was rider-less.

Regina tried to swallow but her heart had somehow found its way into her throat. The fear had a vice-like grip around her soul. "We have to go! Now!"

"Why? What's happened?"

"I don't know," said Regina shortly, mounting Shadowfax, and the mare was already taking off in a run. "That's the problem." Then, shouting over her shoulder, "Are you coming?" But Tinker Bell had already transformed back to her small fairy form and was flying frantically after them.

She desperately hoped that there was a very simple explanation for the whole thing, that she was being completely paranoid, that Robin had intentionally left Shadowfax behind for her to ride back to the tavern. But if that were the case, then where was he? The mental image of Robin Hood sharing a saddle with Little John would've been hilarious if she weren't filled with such dread. Or Will—Will was small and lean, surely there was plenty of room for them both on his horse?

Tinker Bell had caught up with them and fluttered down to find purchase in Shadowfax's mane, braiding several silky strands together and fashioning them around her waist in a kind of makeshift harness.

"Make haste, Shadowfax," Regina whispered, and they picked up speed.

Once they were well on their way, and Shadowfax had established a comfortable rhythm weaving down the path obscured by jutting bushes and tree roots, Regina glanced down at her riding companion and willed her pulse to slow back down to normal. So many questions on the tip of her tongue, and she needed a distraction anyway. She wondered if maybe…

"What happens when you eat pixie dust?" she asked casually.

"Oh," said Tinker Bell, looking shifty-eyed all of a sudden, "I've only ever heard tales, none of which were ever confirmed, but from my understanding, it…it shows you what you need to see."

"That's not remotely vague or unhelpful," Regina remarked with a little bite and a raise of her eyebrow. Tink was sheepish yet silent.

But she had to know. "Can it…make you see things that aren't real?"

"Well it doesn't contain any hallucinogenic properties that I know of, if that's what you're suggesting."

"But can it lie?"

"Regina, what is this about? Are you starting to have doubts about the man with the lion tattoo?" Tinker Bell looked upset. "Please don't tell me I stole the pixie dust for nothing!" She shuddered, no doubt envisioning the wrath of the Blue Fairy.

"It's not that," Regina said, and paused. Tinker Bell knew more than she was letting on; she was sure of it now. Roland was surpassing all his developmental milestones brilliantly, but she couldn't entertain his inadvertently drugging her tea with an entire canister of pixie dust as just some highly improbable coincidence; he must have had help, from someone who knew exactly what she was doing.

Regina mentally berated herself for not sticking to her earlier suspicions.

"You really want to know the truth?" Tinker Bell said abruptly. "Trust me, Regina; you're not going to like what I have to say."

"Just say it," Regina gritted. It couldn't possibly be worse than what she'd already imagined to be the case—that none of this was real, that she was falling in love all over again, but with a figment of her mind, a construct of a past that didn't exist, borne out of a regret that had not left her side for thirty-some years. An escape from her present, that led nowhere.

Tinker Bell sighed, ran a hand through Shadowfax's mane. "I was once, well…not quite naughty, exactly," she began. "But I was not entirely the most well-behaved fairy either"—Regina snorted, like that was much of a surprise, and Tinker Bell glared at her before continuing—"and one night, I thought, wouldn't it be fun to try something new. Blue had…said some things, and I was upset. So I brewed my whole stash of pixie dust. Drank it all in one gulp. Then I woke up and…everything was different."

Regina waited patiently for her to go on.

"It was awful," Tink said plainly. "I had all these memories of the Enchanted Forest that were…I could hardly recognize it. It was like all the color had been sucked right out, and everyone lived in constant fear of something. Well, someone. There was a woman who ruled it alone, up in her castle, with a thirst for vengeance and a darkness in her heart."

Regina's hands tightened on the reins. She didn't like where this was going. Even Shadowfax seemed to be holding her breath.

"Regina…" Tinker Bell swallowed. "That woman was you."

"Was she," said Regina hollowly.

"Yes. Oh, Regina, it was horrible! They called you the Evil Queen. You ordered armies of black knights to murder villages in cold blood searching for Snow White. You were a completely different person than the Regina I had met." She paused. "That's not even the worst part."

"Of course it isn't," Regina said, but she had an idea of what was, because it had already happened to her.

"Those were all just the memories I woke up with," Tinker Bell said grimly. "The place where I actually found myself…it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. You—well, not exactly you, but the Evil Queen—had cast a curse to send everyone there. The first time, anyway. It—it all gets rather too complicated to explain, and I'm not even sure I have all the details right. I tried to fill in all the gaps I could, during the week that I was there." She said it all in a rush. "And Robin—"

It was the first time she'd heard Tinker Bell refer to him as anything other than 'the man with the lion tattoo,' and Regina was fairly certain she'd never actually mentioned his name.

"And how did you know Robin?" she asked sharply.

Tinker Bell looked stricken, reluctant to say anything further. "He was there too."

"Do you remember the first thing that happened when you woke up?" Regina asked, managing to keep her voice impressively even. This time Tink had the conviction not to respond, but she didn't need to; Regina knew. Knew what she must have seen and was so unwilling to tell her, not realizing that she already lived through it once. An adorable young son reunited with his mother, long thought to be dead—and a man, reunited with his wife.

She couldn't fault Tinker Bell for wanting to protect her from the truth, that in the time she'd spent obsessing over destroying someone else's happiness, her soulmate had found his own, and with another. That there was no such thing as a second chance after all; at least, not for her, anyway.

And now she could also be sure of something else—that Maid Marian had cheated death with the aid of the savior and her reformed pirate paramour, and in so doing, had ripped a seam in the very fabric of time.

"I knew I had to help you," Tinker Bell was saying now. "I had to lead you down a different path, to help you find happiness again before your life could turn out so…"

"That's why you came to me that day on the balcony," breathed Regina. "You knew. You already knew what would happen." And, she realized with a sobering clarity, the Tinker Bell who had helped Roland make her tea, was the same Tinker Bell who was riding off to the tavern with her now. Marian's return had opened a door, and the pixie dust had brought her through it. This Tinker Bell had taken the place of the Tinker Bell from Regina's reality; had known what the pixie dust would do to Regina, because she had already experienced it once herself; had hoped that if Regina could no longer find happiness in her own reality, then maybe she could start over in another one.

And if this Tink had only been in Storybrooke for a week after Marian's arrival—then she must have come back to this reality not long after she'd spiked Regina's tea. But she had returned to the same point in time when she'd first ingested the pixie dust. And then Regina…had found herself here exactly a week after Tinker Bell's actions had altered the course of their future, by somehow convincing Regina to step inside the tavern where the other version of herself had failed before.

Regina's heart was beating in a rapid tempo against her chest. "How _did_ you get back here, from Stor—from wherever you were?"

Tinker Bell was shaking her head. "It's all a blur now. Everything that happened that week, I—I can only see bits and pieces of it now, and I lose a little more of it every day." It was possible she didn't even remember the tea incident, and Regina decided not to press the issue. "But the last thing I do remember feeling was…cold."

"Cold?" Regina echoed.

"Yes," Tink said, "it suddenly got very cold, like the entire world had turned to ice. Everything was so dark, and I could feel myself leaving my body behind…and then," she shrugged, "I came back to myself here, and it was like no time had passed at all. And I knew what I had to do. I learned something from the mistakes I—or, the other version of me—had made in the past." She looked abashed. "The only trouble was I'd used up the last of my pixie dust. That's why I had to steal some from Blue."

So pixie dust could act like the Floo powder of time travel. But it wasn't just a matter of horizontal leaps through time, was it? All her memories were still intact, even the ones she desperately wished to forget—because this reality was just as real as the other, and they had coexisted peacefully in some kind of circular parallel, until now.

* * *

It was already an hour past dawn when Regina maneuvered Shadowfax right down the cobblestone path, to the outraged cries of passersby scrambling not to get pummeled by hooves. She dismounted before Shadowfax had even come to a complete stop, having caught sight of a familiar figure lurking towards the door to the tavern.

"Will?"

"Oh!" said Will, whirling around with a start, and he looked genuinely surprised to see them. "Mum. You're…here."

"Where else would I be?" asked Regina, and Will shook his head vigorously.

"Not a clue, mum," he said. "But right glad I am that you made it back!" He was grinning a little too widely and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down under her withering gaze. His hands were hidden from sight behind his back.

If he was trying not to come off as suspicious, then he was going about it rather terribly.

"Is Robin inside?" she asked, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt; she had more important things on her mind at the moment anyway.

"I haven't seen 'im. I didn't ride back with the rest of the men. Got separated."

"What? What happened? Is everyone all right? Did anyone get hurt?"

"I don't know, truly, mum. I lost them inside the castle and then I came straight here. Just got here, matter of fact."

She burst through the door and a barmaid who had been walking by nearly jumped out of her dress and shot a mutinous look in her direction. She pointedly ignored Jacqueline, eyes scanning the room—it didn't take long, the tavern was strangely lacking in business tonight—and then fell on a cloaked figure sitting at the corner table—_their_ corner table—with his back against the door.

Oh thank God, "Robin," she called to him, broke into a brisk walk. Tink, human-sized again, followed suit. "Robin!"

The figure stood, turned to face Regina, features thrown into shadow. Gloved hands lifted; the hood dropped down.

Regina shot out a hand instinctively to block Tinker Bell from taking another step forward. But it was impossible. It couldn't be.

"Mother," she said. No. No, no, no.

Cora's blood red lips turned upward in a smile that did not reach her eyes. "You're a long way from home, my dear."

* * *

**A/N:** No Robin :( Where did he go off to, I wonder?

Hopefully this answered some of the questions you guys had about what the heck Regina's doing in this past/alternate reality/dream thing. And probably generated some new questions, so if you have any, ask me ask me, don't be shy :) I've had so much coffee this morning that my hands are shaking and so is my brain, probably, so maybe none of this makes any sense at all except to me?

Anyway, the last we would've seen of Cora at this point, she was long gone in Wonderland. Don't worry, there's an explanation for her coming back. I promise I'm not entirely making this up as I go along. More soon!


	6. Frozen

_—Storybrooke—_

"What happened?" Robin stormed through the convent door, bringing a gust of frigid air in with him. "Snow White came and found me after you called her. Is she—"

"Papa?" Roland came toddling into the atrium, holding his arms out for his father, who attempted to quell the wild panic coursing through his body so as not to alarm his son.

"Papa's here, my boy," he shushed soothingly, a hand cradling Roland's head as small arms clutched his neck.

"Something happened to R-r-gina," Roland said plaintively, hiccupping. "She won't wake up. Why won't she wake up, Papa?"

Robin rocked the boy in his arms. "Where is she?" he demanded urgently.

"We laid her down on the couch," Tinker Bell said in answer, leading him by the forearm into the sitting room. She could feel the tense energy vibrating off him in waves.

Regina's head was propped gently up on a cloud of pillows, and for all intents and purposes she could've been enjoying an afternoon nap, with her hands folded over her stomach and hair splayed elegantly out to frame a serene-looking face.

"Regina," Robin breathed. Tinker Bell wondered how long it had been since the man had last seen her, because judging from the way he was looking at her now, it had felt like a lifetime to him.

As she understood it, Regina hadn't exactly given him much of a chance to have it any other way, since Emma and Hook had brought back their time-traveling contraband. She supposed that was Regina's own self-destructive way of giving him her blessing, of telling him that his second chance was with Marian, not the Evil Queen.

Especially not the Evil Queen who may have been the reason why he'd been separated from his wife to begin with—the reason why one chance, for him, hadn't proved to be enough.

"We think she's all right," the Blue Fairy joined in with hushed tones. "Her heart rate is fine, and she's breathing normally—"

"So why is she like this?" he asked, shocking himself with the trembling force behind his words. He hadn't meant to raise his voice. "My apologies, Mother Superior, I…"

Blue appraised him sternly, but with understanding crinkling her eyes. "I'm a nun, Robin, not a nurse," she reminded him gently. "And the circumstances of her…illness are not entirely—well, it was—"

"Magic," Tinker Bell supplied, and Robin's eyes fixed upon Regina's body in absolute horror.

"My God, did she do this to herself?" He looked infuriated—with Regina or with himself, Tinker Bell couldn't tell—and began pacing back and forth, ranting all the while. "She once tried to enact Maleficent's sleeping curse by pricking her own finger, and I wasn't the one who was able to stop her from doing it in the end. I failed her once before, and now—"

"Stop, Robin," Tinker Bell said, "please. This wasn't her fault."

"I'm not blaming her," he said roughly, "I blame myself. I could have done something this time. I should have…"

"She didn't know what was happening to her, I swear."

Robin dragged a hand across his face, balancing Roland on his hip with the other as he struggled to calm the tempest of emotions raging through him. "How did it happen, then?"

"It was pixie dust," Tinker Bell explained, and it was clear from Robin's face that that was the last thing he'd expected her to say. "You only need a pinch of it, for it to have its intended effect. And even then, just a sprinkle to the face and you're on your way. But Regina…drank it instead." She paused. "A lot of it."

"But how," Robin started, and Roland, who had been following the conversation to the best of his ability, recognized the simple cause and effect of his own actions and looked ashamed in his father's arms. "It was me, Papa," he confessed, sounding heartbroken. "I made Gina's tea that made her fall asleep. I'm sorry."

Guilt nagged at Tinker bell's conscience, and she knew she should say something, Roland was the least to blame for any of this, but what could she possibly say that they would even half believe? God, not to mention the fact that Blue would surely kill her, if nuns did that sort of thing. She rehearsed a confession, and it sounded absurd even in the privacy of her own mind. _Oh, hello; I'm not really the Tinker Bell you know, I've come from another place and time, and I just thought it might a good idea to send Regina back to mine so that she could—_

_Wait_…

"And this pixie dust," Robin was asking, "what is its intended effect, exactly?"

Shit! The pixie dust. She'd poured the whole damn thing of it into Regina's teacup when Roland hadn't been looking. Every last speck.

How the hell was _she_ supposed to get back?

Robin was looking at her expectantly, and she tried not to look as suddenly alarmed as she felt. "It's how I led her to you the first time," she said, thank God her voice was steady, "to the tavern," and she noted with interest that this was clearly not the first time he had heard of it. "Regina's your soulmate, in case you weren't aware."

His face twisted, as though hearing the words brought him physical pain.

"Well what now, then?" he asked with some difficulty. "We're not in a bloody tavern, but I'm here. She's…she's here but she's not," and he looked so lost himself, when Regina was the one who was years, dimensions even, away from him.

She had to fix this, Tinker Bell thought. She had to make it right. But how?

"Hummmmm," she said, stalling, but Blue came to her rescue.

"We really don't know what happened, Robin, or why we can't seem to wake her," Mother Superior said, placing a hand on his upper arm. "For now all we can do is keep her comfortable, until Gold and Belle get here. They just got back from their honeymoon."

Gold? She'd called Gold too? Tinker Bell shifted her weight from foot to foot, growing more and more agitated with each passing second. She'd managed to avoid any kind of personal encounter with him here in Storybrooke, but she strongly suspected he'd take one look at her now and know, somehow, just know, that she didn't belong here.

"Roland," Robin was saying into his boy's ear, "let me take a closer look at our queen." Roland hopped down, watching with a concerned frown as his papa advanced toward Gina lying prone on the couch. He knelt down before her and reached out, made to touch her cheek, but then his hand fell down to the cushion instead. He gripped it with such pressure that it collapsed, shifting her body, and her face, frozen in sleep, turned ever so slightly in his direction, a lock of hair falling across her forehead. His other hand came up to sweep it away, and the simple contact wasn't enough, he was unable to stop himself now from moving down to cradle the back of her head in his palm.

He whispered, so lowly Tinker Bell could barely make the words out, "Regina. Come back to me."

Desperation began to set in, rattling her nerves. If she couldn't get back to her own body, then all of this would have been for nothing; she would never know to find Regina, to lead her to Robin. She'd been planning to shove her through the tavern door, if it came down to that. But now the Regina in her world would be trapped, doomed to live out a fate just as dark as this one had.

No—worse. She hadn't just found Regina's second chance at happiness; she'd given her a second chance at life, by saving her from falling over the balcony.

"Blue, is there any left?" Tink muttered to the nun as discreetly as she could out of the corner of her mouth.

"What?" Blue asked, distracted by Roland tugging at her dress.

"Pixie dust," Tink whispered urgently. "Was that all we had?" But she feared she already knew the answer Blue was about to give.

"Yes," said Blue, and Tinker Bell was right, "we'll have to go back down into the mines for more."

But the mines were not an option, Tinker Bell knew, because she had just spent the last week down there in dwarf county, excavating the last of its magical reservoirs, with help of a most unexpected source, and she really, really should have thought this through more carefully.

* * *

—_One week earlier—_

"Tinker Bell? Tink?"

It was dark and someone was shaking her. Then she realized it was dark because her eyes were closed. She opened them, cautiously, and a pale but pretty face flooded into view, surrounded by a blurry halo of auburn red.

She'd never met this woman, and yet, somehow, as the features came into sharper focus, she knew her.

"A…Aurora?"

"Oh thank heavens!" said the princess, reaching two gloved hands down to hoist Tinker Bell up to a sitting position, a task made awkward by her protruding belly. "You just fainted, without warning! Are you all right? Did you hit your head?"

"I'm fine," Tinker Bell insisted, although she felt anything but. In fact, it did rather feel like something very large and heavy had just clubbed her over the head, but when a hand came up to investigate, she found no sign of trauma, no lump, bump or bruise of which to speak. Still her head continued to throb, and as she turned round to examine her surroundings the pain, as well as a growing confusion, only intensified.

One moment, she'd been bitching about Blue under her breath, stopping only to get drunk on pixie dust and moonshine, and then the next—

Well, maybe the pixie dust had gotten her high instead, because she'd almost bet her wings that she was straight up hallucinating right now.

"Stop blocking the door, fairy," a dwarf grumped at her in passing, and she was startled to recognize him with memories of her own. She'd heard the tales of his love for one of her fairy sisters, a love that had not ended well for either.

In fact, she seemed to know everyone here—Snow White and her Prince Charming, cuddling around a bundle of blankets in the corner booth—Red was weaving in and out of the crowd, distributing steaming hot mugs topped with generous dollops of whipped cream. The one dashed with cinnamon she set before Henry, who gave her a delighted grin. She had never seen the place look this festive, because she'd been here during times far less so; and yet she knew this in a far-removed sort of way, with no physical recollection of it, just a string of ideas, like information she'd gathered from pages she'd read in a book somewhere, only the book was her own mind.

A bell jingled somewhere above her head and the door to Granny's diner opened. With Aurora's help she scrambled out of the way to make room for a man dressed as a pirate with a hook, and a blonde woman in a red leather jacket (no, she corrected herself, Hook _was_ a pirate, who dressed such as to never let anyone forget it, and that was Emma with him). They were followed by a third figure, a plainly clothed peasant woman with warm, olive skin and strong exotic features. She looked anxious, eyes shifting from one thing to another as though each startled her if she looked at it too long. But she accepted the mug Red handed to her, seemed to savor its warmth like an old friend.

This woman, Tinker Bell did not know, and judging from the curious glances she earned from the townsfolk milling around the diner, nobody did.

It couldn't be a coincidence, could it, that she happened to appear in this world at the same time as someone else who was completely foreign to it?

She wanted to approach her, to know what she knew, or know what she didn't, but Aurora was leading her to the nearest booth, and she wasn't about to wrestle a pregnant lady. Then she was distracted by the fact that Blue, of all people, was sitting across from her, but even if her fairy boss noticed anything off about her, she felt reassured knowing that the first thing Blue would give her was the benefit of a doubt.

Then it all happened so quickly.

A young boy with a mop of curls and dimples to die for skipped excitedly in, the door held open for him by a man in green, the man with the lion tattoo. And it was like Tinker Bell's heart had been preprogrammed to leap for joy when she saw Regina, the lost queen, the evil queen, just the queen, the major, the mother, her _friend_, come in soon after, and they were together—_it was finally happening_—

Granny was asking her something about her head, if she felt dizzy at all, but she was feeling fine now, no, better than fine, and she'd never seen Regina so weightless and untroubled, like she really could just float away at a moment's notice.

"_Marian_?"

And Tinker Bell watched in horror as the illusion shattered. The happiness, so volatile in the uncertainty of its very inception, disintegrated from Regina's face, leaving nothing but an incredulity flushing her cheeks, followed by the slow triumph of despair. Her lips parted in a silent gasp, her eyes growing bright as they darted from her love to his, until they landed on the woman standing frozen beside her.

And as Regina rounded on Emma, Tink turned to the Hood family, reunited, Robin's joy overwhelming him beyond words, and who could blame him, when the thought had never occurred to him until now that it was not only possible but very, very real? But had he and Regina ever been as abruptly thrown out of sync as they were now, two cogs in a wheel, made to be a perfect fit, until fate had something else in store for them—

"Emma," said the woman Marian, approaching them now with Roland clutched in one arm and Robin in the other, "I cannot thank you enough for bringing me here."

Emma's eyes were kind but her lips tightened into an uncomfortable smile.

Regina was watching Marian, dark eyes impenetrable; they did not spare so much as a glance at Robin, perhaps out of the fear that her steely resolve would crumble instantly if they did. But he could not seem to look anywhere else but to her.

"And—your majesty—" Marian's body dipped slightly in curtsy, and Regina looked like she wanted none of her kindness, none of her courtesy, looked like she wanted none of her anything, at all.

"Can I help you," asked Regina, and the words came out in staccatos, sharp, jagged, impatient to disappear as soon as they were spoken.

Marian looked uncertain how to proceed. "You—you don't remember me," she said haltingly, and was Tinker Bell imagining it, or was there fear in Marian's eyes, and did she hold Roland a little tighter to her chest then?

"Should I?" asked Regina, and the slightest crack appeared in her exterior, the tiniest wrinkle of her forehead. Robin, too, was cocking his head at Marian, his look of surprise more evident in his lack of a need to hide it.

"Regina," Emma began, put a hand on her shoulder that Regina looked like she'd love nothing better than to shake off. But maybe Emma had put it there not as a source of comfort, but as a means of restraint. "We rescued her. From your dungeon."

The entire diner had fallen into a deafening hush.

"You were going to execute her the next day, as punishment for helping Snow White."

Regina stumbled backwards, just a step, and in that second Robin had started forward but Emma reached her first, grabbing hold of her arm.

Regina's eyes were searching for something, for recognition, for denial, but it never came, not from her own memories, and not from the man staring at her now, with agony clouding his eyes but hope still burning in his heart.

"I killed your wife," she told him with impossible certainty.

Robin looked nauseated but still, "no," he said, "it's not possible," he said, and he could say these things all he wanted because nobody had the memories to prove them otherwise any longer, and it was a blessing as much as it was most certainly a curse.

"You're right," she said simply, "not anymore." Not when she was standing right there, living, breathing, and her son was nestling his face into her neck, becoming acquainted with the feel of her skin and the scent of her hair. "I obviously didn't kill her." Regina leaned forward, a sneer twitching upon her lips. Her eyes were reddening with tears she couldn't hide, yet empty all the same, and her voice was dark, yet only an echo of its formerly sinister self. "But I should have." And she looked utterly destroyed by her own words.

This time it was Robin who fumbled a step back, his arm shot out instinctively as though to protect his family from the bold and audacious Evil Queen, and she looked like she would be sick to her stomach.

"Regina," he started, and it was the first time Marian had heard the name uttered from his lips, charged with a hurt that could only come from one who had grown accustomed to saying it often, and intimately, but then it was too late for him to say anything more, Regina had wrenched her arm from Emma's grasp and a flick of her wrist took her away in a cloud of purple.

"Regina!" a female voice called out this time, too late, and Charming held Snow back; baby Neal had started crying. Then, "Mom!" a voice was shouting, and it wasn't Emma he was calling for, "Mom!" Henry darted forward, nearly knocking Robin over, and he was out the door and gone. A chilly breeze wafted in as the door began to swing back closed, but Emma's hand shot out to hold it open and then she then was running out after him, yelling, "Henry, Henry!"

"Robin," Marian said cautiously, and he was visibly torn in two, between the question in her voice, and the abrupt emptiness in the diner, in his heart, that Regina had occupied not ten seconds before. The conflict distorted his features, weighed his feet solidly to the ground, but then Tinker Bell detected the slightest movement, and his gaze was unmistakably drawn to the door. His mouth was set in a thin, hard line.

But the last thing Regina deserved was to be confronted by a man both defeated and blessed by his own fate, when hers had only defeated her.

Tinker Bell was up and standing before them suddenly. "Stay with your family right now," and she felt just as surprised as he looked to hear her own voice intercede, realizing they'd never exchanged more than five words previously. "Let Regina's be the one that takes care of her for now." Pivoting on her heel, she left in search of Henry and his mothers.

.

.

.

.

She was collapsed against the front door of her mansion, Henry's arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders to absorb the violent, uncontrollable shaking of her body.

Emma was standing by the mailbox at the end of the driveway, hesitant to approach but reluctant to turn away. Tinker Bell joined her at the white picket fence. A magnificent apple tree stood tall and stately before them like a silent guardian, throwing off moonlight and obscuring their view of son and mother, but its blossoms had begun to wither, the leaves frosting over, and the branches were barren of fruit.

"What have I done?" Emma whispered. "How can we come back from this?" The wood creaked in protest beneath her grip.

Tinker Bell wasn't feeling optimistic about the chances of that happening, at least not in any lifetime from this cracked out dimension of reality, but the prospect of circumventing the mess entirely back in her own…all she had to do was get there.

Then it would be a simple matter of getting Regina to truly believe she could be happy again, because as far as she was concerned, that was the crucial point of no return, the only thing that stood in the way of her reality becoming just like this one—the door to the tavern.

Maybe Henry and Roland would never exist for them the way they did now, but she had absolute faith that Robin and Regina would have Henrys and Rolands of their own—and based on what she'd seen of this world, one whole family seemed far more preferable than two broken ones.

Yet Tink's heart went out to the Regina she saw now, letting Henry carry the weight of them both as he finally coaxed her into the house, and she wished there were a way to help her, too.

Unless…

"I think I have an idea," said Tinker Bell suddenly. It was utterly insane, potentially dangerous even, and completely unpredictable, but pixie dust had never failed her before—it had brought her here, hadn't it, illuminating her path before she even knew how lost she'd been without it—all she'd ever wanted was to be worthy of her wings—and she didn't see why it couldn't do the same for Regina.

"But I'm going to need your help."

.

.

.

.

"Come on, come on…" she stood on tiptoe to swipe a hand into the kitchen cabinets where her eyes could not reach. "It has to be around here somewhere." But all she encountered was no less than fifty types of tea—earl grey, chrysanthemum, oolong, apple, cinnamon, chai, ginger, jasmine—"oh, this is ridiculous. Why do nuns need to drink so much tea?"

"Wait. What about this?" Emma's hand slipped behind a cookie jar and withdrew a small container, deeply viridescent, twinkling even in the dimly moonlit kitchen. "Looks promising enough…" she opened it cautiously and they both peered inside. The dust winked up at them.

"That's it!" Tinker Bell whispered excitedly.

"How can you tell?" Emma asked with some skepticism.

"Honestly," Tinker Bell scolded her, "weren't you the one who gave birth to the truest believer?" Emma opened her mouth to respond but Tinker Bell rolled her eyes, because it was a rhetorical question. "Start believing a little yourself! I am a fairy, after all." She took closer inventory of the canister, and her shoulders sagged in disappointment. This would hardly be enough. "We'll have to go down into the mines."

"Are you sure this will work?"

Not in the slightest, but she had to be sure it was possible. "Do you have a better option?"

Emma still looked doubtful, though not enough to embrace the alternative. "It's just…you're asking me on good faith to help you poison Regina."

"This isn't black fairy dust," Tinker Bell said impatiently. "It will do what it needs to do for Regina."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"What she needs most." To believe she could be weightless again. "Pixie dust doesn't come with a guidebook. Its effect is unique to each person who uses it. If I were to dust you with this, for example—" she tilted the tin toward Emma, who took a reflexive step back—"maybe it would help you decide whether you can truly allow yourself to entrust your heart to a pirate. Especially after losing it to a thief."

Emma's eyebrows shot up to the ceiling.

"Hm." Tinker Bell shut the lid and placed it back behind the cookie jar. "You and Regina have a lot more in common than anyone might have guessed."

"I just hope this helps more than it hurts," Emma muttered as they stole out of the convent and into the darkness beyond.

"Regina's in a world of hurt right now," said Tinker Bell shortly. "What could possibly be worse than this?"

* * *

—_Presently—_

The phone rang and Blue excused herself to answer it, leaving Roland with Tinker Bell, who stood there shell-shocked, watching dazedly at Robin's back hunched over Regina. His shoulders were visibly shaking now, though he didn't make a sound.

Roland reached for her hand and she grasped it in hers. What had she done?

"That was Emma," Blue said upon her return, looking uncharacteristically flustered. "Gold's been detained. The Charmings are at the hospital—Neal has a high fever, they say he woke up with the chills and they've only gotten worse—but Henry is on his way here now—"

"I _am_ here," a voice came to them from the hallway, and a rush of anxious footsteps brought Henry to the doorway, and he was struggling to even out his breathing, as though he'd run to the convent at full speed.

"Mom!" Henry jumped to Regina's side, practically shoving Robin aside, grasped her shoulders and started shaking her, gently enough but with growing persistence. "Mom? Mom, wake up!"

"Henry," Robin started, tried to put a hand on the boy's arm to calm him, but Henry was having none of it. He shook him off.

"Mom—_please_—"

Regina's body jostled from the force of Henry's shaking but her eyes remained closed.

Tinker Bell couldn't even be sure of where and when exactly the pixie dust had sent Regina, although she'd had faith they would cross paths in time to go to the tavern together. But now this was all just a fool's errand, and Regina would be stuck there without her, or worse, dead—then she could never forgive herself, and Henry would never be able to forgive Emma, for the part she had played in this.

"Robin Hood!" Henry rounded on him, eyes blazing with the fury of a son desperate not to lose his mother, and for an alarming second Tinker Bell thought the boy was surely going to tackle him to the ground, or hurt himself trying. Instead, "Robin Hood—you have to kiss her!"

"What?" said Tinker Bell, jolted out of her thoughts.

"Pardon?" said Robin.

"It must be a curse," Henry said emphatically. "It _has_ to be. Only true love's kiss can save her now!"

"Henry," Robin started slowly, as though he needed to convince himself just as much as he did the boy, "I think love is the furthest thing from what your mother feels for me right now. In fact, she has made it fairly clear I am the last person she ever wants to see."

"You're wrong," Henry stated. "The only person she doesn't love enough is herself. If you'd even tried to come after her, to talk to her, to convince her of the truth, then she wouldn't have spent this last week punishing herself!"

"I don't blame her for anything," Robin said heatedly, "_anything_," and he was arguing with an adolescent boy but perhaps this was the only chance he'd gotten to say what he really wanted to say.

"She found out she almost killed your wife and you just let her walk away," Henry bellowed.

"Because _I'd_ just found out she almost killed my wife!"

"But she didn't!"

"It wasn't that simple at the time—"

"I know she thinks it would've been easier if she _had_ killed her, but my mom doesn't take the easy way out anymore. She let you go! And you just let her!" shouted Henry. "How can you love her, or act like you do, claiming to accept the darkness in her past, only to reject her as soon as it becomes real, and not just an abstract thing?"

"I make mistakes," growled Robin, "but I own my mistakes. And I made a mistake the day I let her walk away thinking I could never forgive her for what she—for what she could have done."

"Why didn't you tell her that?"

"Your mother wouldn't listen—"

"Listen to what?" cut in Henry. "Did you say something to her?" Robin remained silent, so he answered for him. "No. You didn't."

"She wouldn't let me—"

"_That's_ your excuse." Henry's eyes were large and incredulous. "She wouldn't let you, so you didn't even try. You're freaking _Robin Hood._ I've seen guys that play you in movies acting braver than you are right now!"

"Henry," Blue admonished finally, but the look on Robin's face was one of admission, not anger.

Roland clutched harder onto Tinker Bell's hand, and realizing the young boy was shivering she bent down and pulled him into her arms. His teeth chattered into her ear. Poor thing. When was the last time he'd seen his father this emotionally unsteady? She rubbed circles into his back, ran a hand through the curls that matched his mother's.

"Just kiss her," Henry begged. "Please. I know she loves you. That's _not_ the issue here." The real issue, the question that he wanted to ask but let linger between them, silent, _Is your love for my mom true enough to save her?_

Tinker Bell's heart sank at the sight of Robin, who had dared to let himself hope what Henry was so convinced to be real, when only she knew—pixie dust wasn't a curse. Robin could kiss her all he liked, but it wouldn't wake Regina up.

She was the only one who could help her, and now she was stuck here.

And where the hell was Gold? She was starting to think she might be desperate enough to ask him for help—hopefully his honeymoon had made him go soft in the heart, or at the very least she could ask Belle to ask him—

"Papa," Roland was calling, and as Tinker Bell transferred him to Robin's arms she noticed with that his breaths were coming out in the form of wintry puffs. Had she left a window open? Stupid Maine weather—she turned to look outside, and found that she couldn't. The glass was freezing over before her very eyes, a delicate but impenetrable labyrinth of crystal, blossoming from the center until it had smothered every corner of the window in opaque stillness.

"What's happening?" she asked, and the glacial air flooded into her lungs, numbing her from the inside out. Blue was by her side then, an arm around her shoulders, and they stood together in shock as the cold descended upon them, swift and unseen, as it penetrated straight into bone.

Henry was shivering audibly now, and he collapsed at the foot of the couch, weighed down by his anger, and by the cold. Robin, stubble frosted over with microscopic beads of ice, set Roland next to him and shrugged off his coat, wrapping it snugly around the two of them. They huddled together as Robin turned to Regina, scooping her up into his arms, and her body was the only one that was completely still.

He sank to the floor beside Henry, Roland sandwiched between them, and he cradled Regina to his chest, breaths coming out in harsh gasps now. Henry snuck a hand out from under Robin's coat to grasp Regina's hand.

The last thing Tinker Bell saw before the arctic freeze obliterated all her senses was Robin, as his eyelids fluttered shut, and he placed one last gentle kiss to Regina's lips.

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry to leave you guys with Cora in the last chapter and then give you this instead, but I promise you'll see her in the next one. Thanks for reading! Leave a review! I cherish your every word. It makes all of this worth it.


	7. Mommy Issues

Panic set in, followed by confusion, then wonder, and back to panic again in quick succession. Unless Rumplestiltskin knew something she didn't, there was no possible way that Cora could be standing before her right now. And yet, there she was, hands folded casually together, her smile treacherously innocent.

Regina remembered Cora's face when she'd last seen her, as though for the first time, with her heart finally in its rightful place—the love, the fascination, the profound joy—and she wished desperately now that that could have been the last memory she ever had of her mother.

Not this.

"Wait just a minute," a voice was saying behind her, and Regina groaned inwardly. Perfect. Will had followed them into the tavern. Yet another helpless person she would need to protect from her mother. At least Jacqueline had had the good sense to make herself scarce.

"Bloody hell," Will gasped.

"Now's really not a good time," Regina reprimanded him under her breath.

But he wasn't even looking at Cora; he was looking at her. More specifically, at the stupid crown that was still in her hair.

"Did you steal that from the _Queen_?" he exclaimed, looking beyond impressed. "So that's where you'd gone off to…her majesty's bedchambers!"

_Yes, you idiot,_ she wanted to say. But, again—not the time.

"Interesting company you're keeping these days," Cora commented, regarding Will and Tinker Bell with the same level of affection she'd bestow upon a pair of flies.

"Leave them out of this." Regina stepped forward, praying they would have the good sense to stay back this time.

"Regina—" Tinker Bell said in warning, but Regina cut her off with a wave of her hand.

"I'll take care of this," she said forcefully, and Cora had the indecency to look amused.

"Well, well," and she clapped her hands together in a show of delight, "this is certainly a new side of you I haven't seen."

"Enough," Regina growled. Her relationship with her mother could be described as many things, but 'patient' was not one of them. "What is it that you want, mother?"

Cora smiled at that. "Dear child. Is that really what you wanted to ask me? Or is the more appropriate question what _you_ want…and do _I_ have it?"

"What have you done to him?" Regina asked murderously, fists clenched at her sides.

"Oh my sweet, sweet daughter. Who says I've done anything? You see…the marvelous thing about thieves is, their hearts are so easily bought by gold."

"And what would you know about having a heart?"

Cora chuckled. "True," she admitted, "but I never said his was still intact."

Regina sucked in a breath, but it was like inhaling shards of ice, and they impaled her lungs from the inside out.

Cora shrugged, brushed some imaginary lint off her cloaked shoulder. "One can sympathize."

Regina shook her head. "I don't believe you," she spat out.

"Well that hardly makes a difference. You don't see him here, do you?" A leisurely laugh as she gestured about the room. "Honestly, Regina. The silly little ideas you get in your head sometimes. A thief, in love with a Queen?" Her face hardened. "It's almost comical, this blind faith you put in people who will abandon you the moment you've given them what they need. You were his ticket into the palace; nothing more."

"Queen?" Will was rubbing a hand over his chin, looking frustratingly clueless. "What's she going on about?"

Regina ignored him. "No." She shook her head. "He would never do that to me."

Cora's shoulders lifted in a long-suffering sigh. "Darling, I am the only one you can count on. I am the only one who has your best interests at heart." And she punctuated each statement by taking another step closer. "You shoved me through a mirror and sent me to another realm, yet here I am, and all I want—all I have ever wanted—is to protect you."

"Lucky me," Regina said darkly.

"I am the only constant in your life," Cora said with such well-calculated sincerity that it would have fooled her—_had_ fooled her—when she was younger. But the years of loss and heartache had taught her better than to believe. "In the grand scheme of things, this man means nothing."

"You're wrong, mother."

"Am I?" Cora sighed, but then her smile spread even wider. "I suppose we shall see. One of us will be proven right momentarily."

"Regina!"

She whipped around, heart in her throat, and there he was, standing in the doorway, in one gloriously whole piece; the utter panic in his eyes, the breath he released as though he'd been holding it until he saw her again, told her that he was still in possession of his heart, that it beat on, boldly and flawlessly in his chest; and she knew, instinctively, that it belonged to her now.

And she had never been so happy, nor so devastated, to see him as she did in that instant.

He looked so relieved to find her there, nothing seemed more important at the moment than taking her straight into his arms—certainly not the strange woman standing off to the side, eyeing him with passive curiosity—and as he made to do so, Regina flung her arms out as though to shove him back.

"No!" she said frantically. "Stay away."

His brow furrowed in confusion as he took another step towards her.

"I mean it," she warned him lowly. "You don't want to be here right now."

"Oh but indeed I do," Robin retorted. "And I would've made it here sooner if Little John's stallion hadn't thrown a shoe on my way here from camp."

"That's too bad about that," interjected Will unnecessarily.

"Will?" Robin seemed to notice for the first time that his young charge was in their presence. "Thank God. Where were you?"

"Regina," Cora spoke up behind her, sounding like a disapproving hostess with uninvited houseguests. "You haven't introduced me to your new friend."

"You're right, he's nothing to me," Regina snarled, but it was too late, and the only thing her outburst accomplished was to exacerbate Robin's indignation.

"Regina, who is this woman?"

"Nobody you need to know," she pleaded. "Trust me. Please, just go."

"You know I'll do no such thing," he told her angrily. "I just went through hell to find you. I don't intend to lose you again. One time was more than enough."

Cora was laughing outright now. "First a stable boy, and now a thief. You're developing quite the track record."

"He's not just a thief, mother," and she felt Robin start beside her in response, wondered if he could see it now, the jawline she'd inherited, the plump red lips, the expressive brown eyes, filled with fire, and with rage.

"Oh no, my dear, of course not; you're right. He's the _prince_ of thieves." Cora's voice was mocking. "Not exactly the sort of royalty I had in mind for you."

"Tell me something, mother," Regina said nastily, "what exactly did you have in mind for my sister?"

Cora's face faltered, froze, and it must have required an extreme effort not to take a visible step back. "How did you—" She interrogated Regina with her eyes, they grew colder, narrowed into deadly slits, then widened with sudden realization. "You're not from here," Cora breathed. "Who are you?" And all innocent pretenses fell, crumpled to a heap as she stalked forward, Regina grabbed Will and Tinker Bell by the arm and threw them forcibly towards the door, yelling, "_Run!_"

Cora's hand shot out and Regina felt her windpipe begin to collapse under an unseen force, she gasped for a breath that would not come, her feet lifting off the ground as a purple thread of magic dragged her up by the throat.

"Who are you?" Cora thundered, and the entire building shook. Regina heard screams in the far off distance, hoped that whoever was still left in the tavern would be able to escape before it collapsed on them all.

Then, to her dismay, Robin unleashed an arrow from his quiver, was aiming it directly where Cora's heart should have been. He had his sleeves rolled back, the muscles beneath his lion tattoo flexed with the tension in the bowstring.

"No," she gasped out to warn him. "Robin—"

Cora's laughter filled the turbulent air, expanded until it echoed off the ceiling and the walls. "How positively adorable," she said. "You think you can save her with your pointy little sticks?" And before Robin had a chance to react her other hand had extended outward and he made a horrible choking sound as he fells to his knees, his bow slipping from his grip.

"Robin!" Regina cried, and pure instinct released her hand from the invisible grip around her neck. White flames burst from her palm, blinding her to everything but the look of pure shock on Cora's face, as she flung them straight into her chest.

Cora flew up into the rafters like a ragdoll and dropped back to the ground with a deafening thud, her cloak draping down to rest over her body. Robin began to cough as Regina fell on her feet, and she was by his side an instant later, grabbing his shoulders, then his face, between her hands.

"Are you all right?" she breathed, and his arm encircled her waist in response, pulling her against him. He buried his face into her side and she threaded her fingers through his hair, pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Suddenly Cora's body shifted with a small groan, Regina was shoving Robin back in order to shield him while he attempted to do the same to her, when a voice issued from beneath the cloak, high-pitched, almost childlike, curious and full of mischief.

"Now I wonder where you picked up that neat little trick, dearie."

Regina went motionless.

Cora stood, brushing off dirt and bits of walnut shells, only it wasn't Cora any longer.

It was Rumplestiltskin.

"You missed another magic lesson," he admonished Regina with an exaggerated shake of his finger. "Or did you forget? Too busy making eyes at your new paramour, perhaps?"

"Magic?" Robin repeated, and it finally seemed to occur to him that Regina hadn't blasted her mother with some run-of-the-mill handheld flaming torch. And now he was looking at her as though—God, what was that in his eyes? Fear?

"I can explain," she started desperately but was interrupted by an obnoxious "ahem."

"So, as we've just established…youuuu're not from here," Rumplestiltskin trilled.

Regina stood and glared at him. "And just what do you think you were doing," she hissed, "pretending to be my mother? Trying to _kill_ me, kill _us_?"

"Just having a bit of fun," Rumplestiltskin tsked at her. "Don't take it personally. Besides, one never knows what you're truly capable of, without a little bit of a—push."

She felt Robin tense beside her, shook her head in disbelief. "Are you really that…_bored_?"

Rumplestiltskin giggled. "Oh, quite the contrary. This whole experiment has been…_most _informative."

"And what were you trying to find out exactly?"

"Well," Rumplestiltskin began, "at first I was curious to see what kept you this time. Was it my…motivational speech, perhaps?"

"I would hardly call it that," Regina retorted. "Do you have any idea what kind of fate you sentenced me to?"

"Oh, no, dearie," he chided her, "that was all your doing. You see, it's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. I may tell you which path you're heading down, but you're the one who rrruns with it. Speaking of running—" He wiggled his fingers at Robin. "I thought you might have been trying to run _from_ your fate, but now it looks like you've found a different one to run to altogether."

Regina followed his gaze. Robin was rubbing the back of his neck, still sore from Cora's chokehold, lion tattoo on full display. Startled, she turned back to Rumplestiltskin, who was steepling his fingers together in blatant glee. But how had he—

"How did I know?" Rumplestiltskin sniggered, as though he'd read her mind. "A question to be addressed another time, I'm afraid."

"So, what?" Regina asked. "You thought you'd stop by, try to mess this one up for me too?"

"You still don't get it, dearie," said Rumplestiltskin, a hint of malice behind the mirth now. "Nobody's messing up anything except—" an exaggerated upward flourish of his hand, a finger pointed in her direction "—_yourself_."

And the words hurt because they held more truth than she cared to admit.

"What would you know about it?" she snapped defensively.

"Oh, enough," Rumplestiltskin declared with an impish smile. "Forgive me, dearie, but that simmering rage of yours seems to have…fully erupted, since I last saw you. I'm rather impressed. So tell me—"

Regina's mouth tensed in a thin line.

"Where _did_ you come from?"

She glanced hesitantly over at Robin, who opened his mouth to speak—words of encouragement or of something else, she didn't have the chance to find out, because she waited a second longer only to realize he'd stopped moving, as though his entire body had been frozen in place. She glared at Rumplestiltskin.

He grinned. "I thought we could use a bit of privacy. Juice?" He helped himself to an abandoned cup from the nearest table and took a whiff. Curling his nose, he tossed it over his shoulder and it landed on the ground with a splash and a clang. "Not juice," he said, sitting down, gesturing for Regina to do the same, which she did reluctantly.

"So what makes you think I'm not who I say I am?"

"Oh, I'm sure you are," Rumplestiltskin responded. "But there's more to it than that."

"And what makes you so sure?"

"Aside from the obvious, you mean." He paused but she only raised an eyebrow at him, which he seemed to find positively delightful. "First off," giggling again, "this _sister_ you mentioned." He leaned in. "Never met her."

_Well you will soon enough_, Regina thought.

"And, no offense, dearie, but you're not that fast a learner." He cupped one hand over the other, swiveled them around until a small ball of purple flame ignited in his palm. "Nor have I ever seen your magic so…"

"Advanced?" she supplied.

"Colorful," he finished, and vanquished the flame with a fist.

She frowned. "You mean white."

"Exactly! It's the color of all colors combined. The hallmark of light magic," he said, in singsong. "Which is _quite _interesting, because I can tell the darkness has already done more than just taste you by now…you've tasted it too. Sweet, wasn't it?"

"Hardly," Regina scowled at him, "just bitter. So I spat it back out." _I've seen what life has thrown at you, and you still fight against the darkness every single day_. "I'm afraid you're the one who's been swallowed by it," she sneered.

Rumplestiltskin looked absolutely tickled by the thought, shivered pleasantly in his seat. "Must taste better than you do, then, dearie!"

Regina smiled tightly. "I can live with that."

"So where did you learn it? Certainly not from me."

Her smile turned ironic. "You and then some." _Henry_, she thought, and the reminder was like another invisible hand around her neck.

"So you're from the future?" he prodded.

"Not exactly," Regina frowned. "At least, I don't think so."

"Are all your memories still intact? Memories of where, and when, you came from?"

If only they weren't.

_Marian? I thought you were dead. I thought I'd never see you again!_

_Mama?_

_You—you don't remember me._

_Should I?_

_I killed your wife._

_Regina. Wait, Regina! Regina, damn it, don't walk away from me again!_

"Not from the future then," Rumplestiltskin concluded upon seeing Regina's face twist and darken, and he looked oddly pleased at having confirmed this bit of information. "Glad to hear it. Pesky people, these occasional errant time travelers. Always sticking their noses in where they don't belong, completely disregarding my indispensable advice."

Regina gave him a withering stare, _please, do continue_.

He switched gears then; she could practically hear the cogs taking calculated turns about the inner workings of his head. "And how did you get here?"

"Ask Tinker Bell," she muttered. "She poisoned me with pixie dust."

He cackled, "Now there's a bit of irony," which she didn't find as amusing.

She had the strange sense that even though he was the one asking her the questions, he still knew more about what was going on than she did.

Rumplestiltskin folded his hands together on the table now, stretched his shoulders back, looking like he was at professional business meeting all of a sudden. Regina sighed in exasperation before the words were even out of his crooked, glittering mouth. "In that case, I need a favor."

Of course.

Regina barked out a laugh. "I'm not doing anything for you."

"I'll strike you a bargain, then."

"I don't make deals with you anymore, either."

"Are you sure there's nothing you want that I don't have the power to offer you? Think long and hard, dearie. It's a one-time offer."

"I'm positive," she snapped. "Unless you want to hand over your dagger, there is nothing you have that's of any interest to me."

Rumplestiltskin leaned in, beady little eyes capturing her large brown ones in a long, uncomfortable stare. "What are you really doing here, Regina? Besides _running_?"

Her shoulders slumped before she could stop them. She glanced back at Robin's frozen form, his forehead wrinkled in concern, his mouth formed around words she wouldn't get to hear, one hand clenched in a fist, the other reaching out as though he had been about to wrap it comfortingly around her waist.

It was all wrong, she realized suddenly. Who had she been trying to fool? Snow, Tinker Bell, Robin, herself—herself most of all. This wasn't her Robin Hood; would never be her Robin Hood. Her Robin had known her, all of her, had trusted her and loved her all the same, until he learned the hard way that as generous and forgiving a man as he was, some parts of her past were simply unforgiveable. How could she live a life with this version of that man, and accept _his_ love, his unconditional love, when she alone knew the conditions that would destroy it?

She didn't deserve it; he didn't deserve _this_.

And Henry—how could she have let herself do this to Henry? Goddamn her light magic; she didn't deserve that, either.

She couldn't run from her past any more than she could build her future here.

Rumplestiltskin knew her answer before she had a chance to give it.

"You'll have to go back the way you came, dearie," he said, and she opened her mouth to retort that they were fresh out of pixie dust when he brandished an arm to interrupt her, fingers gesturing up toward the ceiling, "_unless_ there's another way."

"Are you suggesting you know another way?" she asked, but it was a rhetorical question.

His smile could have rivaled the Cheshire Cat's.

"Why do you care so much about helping me get back?"

"Oh, make no mistake, dearie, your future is no concern of mine. It's my own future that interests me…although I suspect you've already changed a good many things about it for the better. Never thought you could be capable of that, did you?"

Regina looked down at her hands, pressed them into the table to stop them from trembling.

"Do we have a deal then?"

* * *

"My, what a charming establishment," said Rumplestiltskin as he stood, looking around as though really noticing it for the first time.

"You got what you came for," Regina said shortly. "The door is that way."

"I like you much better like this," he told her with a grin to match the puckish lilt in his tone. "So much fire and rage that you don't even bother to hide anymore. You may have light magic now, dearie, but there is still a darkness in your heart that won't be so easy to vanquish."

"Thanks for your concern," she snapped. "Goodbye, Rumplestiltskin."

He snickered and disappeared with a snap of his fingers.

Regina made her way back over to Robin, slowly, hesitantly. She contemplated for a split second, nothing more, whether to wait and unfreeze him until after she'd gone, skip the goodbye, but as she drew closer the thought seemed more absurd, and then the smell of forest filled her senses, banishing it from her mind completely. She touched a hand to his face and he let out a gasp, his whole body loosened up, his eyes refocused on her like she was the only thing in the world he needed to see. It was the first time they were alone together since that moment on her balcony, and they both took a moment to relish the fact that the other was alive, well, breathing, safely within arm's reach again.

Though it wouldn't be for much longer, she thought with a dull ache in her heart.

"You're here," he said, smiling crookedly.

"Shadowfax," she responded by way of explanation.

"I knew she would find you," he said. "I rode back with Little John."

She tried to smile back but her lips wouldn't comply.

"Regina," he said, and his voice was husky. "Come here."

She begged her body not to move but it disobeyed, feet stumbling and hands reaching and she fell into his arms, his lips onto her skin, and he kissed her soundly until she was boneless in his grasp.

"I missed you," he whispered when they parted. She reached up to cradle his face in response, not trusting her voice to speak without cracking. He rubbed his forehead against hers, eyes closing as he breathed her in. "I feared the worst."

"I'm all right," she whispered.

"Why didn't you tell me before? About the magic?"

She angled her chin against his chest as she looked up at him, fearing what his eyes would show, but they were nothing but warm and blue, so blue.

"I forgot," she said honestly. _Yet another thing of my past I was trying to pretend never existed._

"Are you ashamed of it?"

Her eyes dropped back down, focused on the rise and fall of his chest with each slow, calm breath.

"Magic always comes with a price."

"A price you've paid before," he realized.

_A price we've all paid_.

"Well, I'm still in its debt," she told him with a heavy sigh.

"Then we shall simply have to repay it," Robin said cheerfully, depositing a kiss to her hairline.

She smiled at the sentiment, as ridiculous as only she knew it to be. "We?"

"Yes, 'we,' whether you like it or not."

"A thief who talks about settling scores and paying debts that are not even his own," she mused.

"I'm still a man of honor, and of my word," he told her seriously, then paused for a moment. "The…imp…said you weren't from here."

Regina's arms instinctively began to withdraw from around his waist but he held them in place. "I…"

He waited patiently.

"It's difficult to explain," she said lamely.

"Then don't," he smiled, and her breath hitched.

"I hardly think it matters where you came from," he said with a shrug, taking her hand, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist. "Only where you plan to go."

She shook her head. "Where did you come from?"

He laughed. "What do you mean?"

"You're too good to be real," she told him, and it was making it all the harder for her to leave him.

"That's not something a thief hears from his Queen every day," he teased. "So where _do_ you plan to go?"

She definitely couldn't look him in the eyes now as the lie fell from her lips. "Wherever you are."

"I like the sound of that," he murmured, bending down to press light butterfly kisses down the side of her neck. "Although—in case we are unduly parted again—I wanted to give you something, so you'll never forget."

He withdrew a thin brown package from inside his tunic, the very same she had seen Little John give him that day in the tent when she'd first woken in this world.

"This belonged to my mother," Robin said gruffly, undoing the knotted twine. "I never met her, but…"

Regina rubbed her palms against his chest. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He gave her a small smile. "For a long time after she was gone my father was beside him in grief, rage, and before long…he found ways to dull all of it." He was unfurling the brown paper now. "One night, in a drunken tantrum, he set the entire west wing on fire. It was where all my mother's belongings had been stowed after her death. The fire left most things in ruin, and then the rest…" He drew in a ragged breath. "Thieves came and pilfered the rest while we stayed with one of the local townsmen during its reconstruction. The man who owns this tavern now, actually."

Regina stilled in his arms.

"Little John and I have since tracked down most of what remained of my mother's. He acquired this particular item from a peddler just outside Sherwood Forest." He laughed to himself. "And to think we never would have crossed paths with it if I hadn't insisted we stay here an extra week, for you."

"How did he know it belonged to your mother?" Regina wondered. "Did he recognize it?"

Robin shook his head regretfully. "Even I wouldn't recognize half her things by sight alone. The only way of knowing for sure is the inscription on the inside…her initials. Here. I wanted you to have it." And a ring fell out of the wrapping and into the palm of his hand, a single emerald stone set in a strong gold band.

Regina was stunned into silence. She looked down at her ring finger, on her right hand, where Robin was already slipping it into place, and it fit perfectly, just as the one in Storybrooke had.

"I—" she started, but tears were prickling at the backs of her eyes all of a sudden, and what did any of this mean?

"Regina," Robin began lowly, stopped when a tear managed to escape despite her best efforts and he caught it with the pad of his thumb. "Why are you—"

"Will?" came a soft plaintive voice from around the corner.

Both Robin and Regina looked up in surprise.

"Ana!" exclaimed Robin, and a timid young girl with exquisite golden yellow hair and full pink lips appeared into view.

"What was that man doing here, Uncle Robin?"

It was the innkeeper's daughter, Regina realized. The girl Robin had saved from his own father.

"The man just stopped by for a visit," she explained to her hurriedly, "but he's gone now."

Ana looked uncertain. "Where's Will?" she asked again.

"You're looking for…Will?" Robin's brow furrowed in confusion, but Regina saw the frightened look on the girl's face and understood instantly.

"He's outside," she said with a reassuring smile. "I'll go get him."

She stepped out to find Will and Tinker Bell caught in some comical pose, looking as though they had been arguing loudly when Rumplestiltskin froze Robin and, it appeared, these two as well. Fighting the temptation to leave Will as he was, Regina sighed, waved her hand and they shimmered out of their immobilized states.

"I don't fancy losing my head today, thank you very much," said Will heatedly without pause.

"Oh, you silly boy," Tinker Bell reprimanded him, "our friends were in trouble and you abandoned them the first chance you got."

"And what about you, eh?" Will asked indignantly. "You took off too!"

"To yell some sense into you!" Tinker Bell argued. "I don't know why I even bothered. Clearly I was wasting my time."

"Yeah, clearly," said Will in a snit.

"Besides," Tinker Bell continued, "at least I had the benefit of knowing Regina can handle herself. You were willing to just leave them there at that woman's mercy."

"Well I've got to save me own hide first, now don't I!" said Will.

Regina cleared her throat loudly and two pairs of guilt-ridden eyes turned to her.

"I've taken care of it," she told them shortly. "Will, Ana's waiting for you inside."

"Bloody hell am I in for it now." His guilt increased tenfold as he shuffled back into the tavern.

As the door closed behind him, Regina turned to Tinker Bell.

"You lied to me," she said, pointblank, and to her surprise, the fairy looked immensely relieved.

"Regina? Is that you? Oh, thank God you made it!" She flung her arms around Regina's neck. "I was so worried I wouldn't be able to find you after—"

"After you slipped pixie dust in my tea?" Regina asked sharply. "So you do remember."

Tinker Bell grimaced. "I couldn't be sure when I saw you with Snow whether you were _you_, or, you know…the _other_ you."

"And what were you hoping to accomplish, exactly, by sending me here?"

"To guide you down the right path," Tinker Bell said seriously, and Regina would've thrown her hands up in disgust at the vague response if it hadn't been such a…_fairy_-like thing for her to say. "You can't possibly tell me you don't have some idea of what you need to do now."

Regina felt all the indignant outrage deflate from her and she fell back against the wall of the tavern, hand pressed to her stomach. "Rumplestiltskin was right," she said grimly. "I'm not trying to find a new future here. I'm running from an old one." The fairy started to respond but Regina shook her head, needed to get this out. "Tinker Bell, I can't keep pretending that all the things I've done, all the horrible things that have happened because of me, don't matter just because they have yet to happen here."

"They don't have to happen here," Tinker Bell reasoned. "We've started down a new path. When the other Regina comes back to it, maybe life will turn out differently for her."

"And how is she going to do that?" Regina asked. "We're not exactly rolling around in pixie dust, and if she's trapped in my Storybrooke body, or wherever the hell she is—what?" Tinker Bell was grimacing. "Spit it out."

"There may not be another Regina to bring back if we don't do something about it," she said.

Regina shook her head, not understanding.

"Remember the cold I was telling you about?" A wary nod. "I think I died, Regina. I think that's how I was able to come back. And…I think…everyone else died along with it. You…me…"

Regina was grabbing her arm, clutching her stomach even harder with the other. "Henry?" she gasped. "Is—" but she couldn't get the rest of the words out, Tinker Bell was shaking her head again, no, no—

"The whole town froze over, Regina. Henry, Roland…Robin…they're all gone."

"I _have _to get back," Regina gasped, and any doubt that may have cropped traitorously back up in her heart while Robin was holding her—it was so easy to forget the world when he was holding her—came back at full strength, reinforced by the fact that her own happiness here was only a small sacrifice to make in order to save the ones she loved.

"Regina?" Robin was by her side suddenly, hoisting her up, preventing her fall. She clutched his forearm, fingers pressing into his lion tattoo, one last reminder of everything she was prepared to give up. She felt her ring, his mother's ring, burning into her skin.

"Will and Anastasia," he was saying, but her mind was so fuzzy from the grief that she could barely make the words out, "I think they're—"

She put an affectionate hand to his cheek, and he leaned into her touch. "They're in love," she managed to finish for him gently, "they were planning to escape with whatever he managed to steal from the castle, to start a new life, together."

Robin blinked, then chuckled. "That boy…" he muttered, but not quite as vexed as he probably intended to sound. "He certainly had me fooled."

"There's no room for trickery in that kind of love," Regina disagreed, her heart pounding rapidly. "He was only trying to hide it to protect her."

Robin's arms had enveloped her entirely now, he was pressing a kiss to her temple and she struggled not to meet Tinker Bell's gaze, knew she would see in it only a fraction of the anguish that was filling her lungs, she couldn't breathe.

"I feel as though I may very well be hallucinating right now," Robin was murmuring into her hair, and she felt him smile. Despair numbered her down to her fingertips. Her heart was bottoming out now. "You're simply too good to be real."

How was she ever going to convince this man to let her go?

A crunch of gravel and an approaching figure drew her attention away for a split second. It was a woman, judging by the sound of her voice as she hummed quietly to herself, swinging a cloth-covered basket under her arm. The open torch above the tavern door threw light upon her head, hooded, but there was no mistaking the raven dark curls of hair with flecks of gold peeking out of the sides, nor the wide-eyed look on Tinker Bell's face when she was the first to recognize the woman walking towards them.

It was the last person Regina ever would've expected to want to see.

It was Maid Marian.

* * *

**A/N: **I am so sorry for the long wait on this, hopefully you haven't forgotten about my little story by this point! If you've made it to this part (thank you for reading!), and you feel like throwing something at me, please don't! Leave a review instead :)? More soon!


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